


At the Hopeless Gate

by semperama



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Noir, M/M, Mental Health Issues, On the Run, Paranoia, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 10:35:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 48,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7504942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1948, and Dick Winters is staying in New York City for a while, trying to figure out how to start the next phase of his life. When some of the guys from Easy Company come up for a reunion, Dick meets a young woman at a jazz club who enlists his help in dealing with her difficult brother. Lewis Nixon was a paratrooper with the 17th Airborne, and life has not been easy for him since the war. Despite his better judgment, Dick finds himself being drawn deeper and deeper into the tangles of Nix's life, until he's putting himself at risk in an attempt to save a man who possibly can't be saved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jouissant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/gifts).



> The title of this work comes from the poem You are Tired (I Think) by e. e. cummings. 
> 
> I got the idea when Jouissant asked me to come up with a noir AU for a tumblr meme. Since then, it has kind of taken over my brain. I'm going to try very hard to update regularly (the next chapter is already written, so you can expect at least that one soon), but thanks for bearing with me. <3

When I stepped off the train in New York, it was with the feeling of having escaped something. It was my mother’s questions that stirred my restlessness—questions of when I would settle down and whether I thought Mrs. Redmond’s daughter was pretty and whether I was going to put an offer in on the empty farmhouse down on Old Mill Road. I’d barely had my diploma in hand, and already I was being asked to make decisions that seemed foreign to me, to lock in a specific future when I was used to moving through life on instinct. Instinct was what told me that I was never going to be interested in Mrs. Redmond’s daughter, and it was what told me that the searching looks from my little sister were only going to come more and more frequently. The only thing I could do was go away, somewhere Ma couldn’t look at me with all her expectations, somewhere Dad’s silences wouldn’t fill up every room. 

At first I thought I’d just go to Philadelphia for a while, but I’d changed my mind to New York after consulting with Harry, who told me some of the guys were talking about doing a reunion there in early September. Something about it seemed fateful. I could go up there ahead of the men, and if I still didn’t feel like I was getting my head on straight by the time they left, I could always go back home then. There was something appealing in the thought of disappearing into a city that big, something I couldn’t get out of my head once the idea had taken hold. So I arrived a week ahead of time and checked into The Roosevelt Hotel, carrying two suitcases filled with most of my worldly belongings, uncertain of when I would be checking out again. 

I spent those first few days on my own exploring the blocks around the hotel, going for long, meandering walks that often nearly got me lost. There was something about all the noise and bustle that, while I wouldn’t call it pleasant, awakened a kind of excitement in me. It was the excitement of feeling small, I think. Invisible. There was no one tipping their hat and calling me Major when I walked into a store. People rarely glanced my way at all, each of them too busy with their own lives, too in a hurry to get where they needed to go. It was freeing, to be so unnoticed.

Still, I was glad when the day came that the other men from Easy Company arrived. I hadn’t seen most of them since shortly after we all got home, at Harry and Kitty’s wedding. Harry had been easy to keep in touch with, but I had trouble figuring out where to draw the boundaries with men who had mostly seen me as their superior officer. I didn’t even write to most of them much, though I returned their letters on the rare occasion they wrote to me. The thought of seeing them face to face again filled me with anticipation. 

Of course, not everyone could make it, scattered around the country as we were. Harry arrived first, and the two of us set ourselves up at a table at the bar to wait for the rest of the them to trickle in—Ron and Carwood together, then Eugene, then Babe, then George Luz and Joe Toye. We made a good little company, even if some of the men were missing. There were enthusiastic handshakes and shoulder claps and smiles all around, all of us happy to see each other and unafraid to say so. 

After everyone had checked in and put their bags away, we decided to go out on the town. Or rather, the men decided and I agreed. The last thing I wanted was to put a damper on their fun that week. George suggested we go to an authentic New York jazz club, and everyone else was game, so we headed out onto the street and flagged down a couple cabs and piled inside, still all wearing smiles just from being there together, alive together. 

Fifty-Second Street was like a carnival at night. The lights were so bright you’d have thought they’d never burn out, even long after there were no people around to see them anymore. Music seemed to rise up from the sidewalk and spill out of every doorway and window. Marquees shouted unfamiliar names at me in bold, multi-colored letters, and sandwich board signs proclaimed _”Hottest Spot in Town!”_ and _”Come In and Hear the Truth!”_

“I heard Samoa’s a strip joint.” George clamped a hand on my shoulder and leaned around me to speak to Harry, his expression dark and wicked in the flashing neon. “Wanna check it out?”

“Aww, c’mon now, Luz. You know we can’t take the Major to a strip joint,” Harry said, elbowing me in the ribs. “Although it’d be fun to see if we can get him to turn as red as his hair.”

Joe was walking ahead of us, and he looked over his shoulder and flashed Harry a crooked grin. “You just don’t want to get in trouble with Kitty, do ya?”

“You boys pick the place. I don’t care where,” I cut in. But Harry was right—I had no desire to go to a strip joint. 

“I got bad news for you fellas.” Joe’s grin widened and he turned around now to shuffle backwards, hands in his pockets. It made me nervous to watch him, the way he limped along on that brand new prosthetic of his. I wished he’d watch where he was going. The other pedestrians parted around him like a stream around a boulder. “None of these clubs are nice wholesome places you could go with your mother. Not anymore, if they ever were. The jazz is moving out and the girls are moving in.”

“Remind me why we’re here then?” Carwood asked from somewhere behind me. 

“Didn’t you hear him?” said George. “ _Girls_. What more reason is there?”

I’d had a feeling things would take this turn, but it was so good to have everyone in one place again that I didn’t mind indulging their whims. If we ended up someplace with a striptease, I’d sit with my back to the stage and enjoy their company. 

“I think Jimmy Ryan’s is still pretty tame,” Ron said, coming unexpectedly to my rescue. He thumped ash from the end of his cigarette and then used it to gesture at the brownstone we were coming up on. A groan of disappointment rippled through the group at the idea of going somewhere that could be described as tame, but it was half-hearted at best, so by unspoken agreement, we all gravitated toward the Jimmy Ryan’s awning and then slipped inside.

After a short, dark flight of stairs, we came out in a basement ballroom. A gauze-like cloud of smoke hung under the low ceiling, giving the place a fuzzy, dreamlike quality. The lights were dim; even the footlights around the tiny stage only illuminated the quintet up to their knees, leaving their faces shrouded in shadow. There was a pock-marked parquet dance floor in the middle of the room, but it was deserted. The rest of the space was filled with tables covered in short burgundy cloths and surrounded by weathered-looking wooden chairs. It was early still, so only about half of them had people sitting in them, groups of men and women or men and men, some of them staring with rapt attention at the stage and some caught up in conversation with each other. There wasn’t a table big enough to fit all of us, so we split over a couple—George, Joe, Babe, and Gene at one table and myself, Harry, Ron, and Carwood at the other. 

That was when I first saw her, when she came over to wait on us. 

She was the kind of woman you’d expect to change your life, though maybe not in the way she ended up changing mine. All the men looked at her at once, and most of them didn’t even try to be subtle about it. At Jimmy Ryan’s, the waitresses wore matching blue-sequined dresses with low necklines and short skirts that left miles of leg on display. The uniform, if you could call it that, flattered her more than just about all of the other girls I saw flitting from table to table. She had the figure for it and a face to match, beautiful in a way that made it seem kind of a shame that she was stuck in a dark basement. While the others gawped, I blushed and looked away.

“Well hi there, fellas,” she said in a sing-song voice, a fake voice. She walked around the tables to take drink orders and let her fingers brush the shoulders or necks of each of the men in turn. There were blue feathers pinned into her thick, black curls, and they swished like a peacock’s tail as she flirted circles around us. When she got to me, I kept my gaze carefully trained on her face. That seemed to amuse her.

“What’ll you have, Red?” she asked, simpering at me. If not for that simper, her face would have been wholesome. 

“Water for me,” I said.

That made her laugh, her fingertips resting lightly on my shoulder. “What, did you get the short straw tonight?”

“No, ma’am. I just don’t drink.”

“The Major here’s a real teetotaler,” Harry said, clapping me on the back.

“Major, huh?” she said. “You boys are soldiers?”

“Some of us are,” I said. “Some of us just used to be.”

“You fought in the war?” 

I nodded at her, one quick nod I hoped didn’t invite further discussion. It wasn’t that I minded her knowing; I minded what usually came after the knowing—pity, curiosity, uncomfortable questions. 

“My brother fought in the war,” she said, her eyes lighting up with something like hope. 

I’d encountered this kind of thing a surprising amount since the war ended. A lot of people seemed to think all soldiers knew each other, like we weren’t spread out all over Europe and bonded too tightly into our individual companies to care much about anything beyond them. It was hard enough getting attached to a handful of men, knowing they weren’t safe and neither were you, knowing once you were safe again you wouldn’t be living in each other’s pockets anymore. Even when I got promoted away from Easy, they were still the only men I could afford to care about. 

Still, I asked, “What’s his name?” It was two questions in one; was it accurate to talk about him in the present tense?

“Lewis,” she said. I had to stare at her to get her to go on. “Nixon. Lewis Nixon. He was…well, I don’t know much about what he did over there. He doesn’t talk about it. But I know he jumped out of planes.”

“Oh, a paratrooper!” Harry cut in. “We were paratroopers.”

“Mhm,” I said, “but we didn’t know a Lewis Nixon.”

She nodded, but her mouth pressed into a thin line of disappointment. “Well, it was a long shot, wasn’t it?” Then, like she had just remembered where she was and what she was doing, her counterfeit grin was back. “I’ll have your drinks right out, boys.”

I forgot about her for a while after that. By the time she came back with the drinks, I had been drawn into a conversation with Carwood about how to keep deer out of a garden, which went on until Harry got tired of listening to us and asked Ron how the Army was faring without all the rest of us in it. The war stories started to come out then, as I had suspected they would. The last time all of us were together was at Harry and Kitty’s wedding, and even in the face of all that happiness, we couldn’t stay clear of the subject. It was strange, the way we couldn’t stop picking at those scabs. It was stranger still that some of them barely hurt anymore. Even Joe laughed, in spite of his metal leg, in spite of the memory of his best friend in the world lying in blood and snow. People are a resilient species, I thought. They could bounce back from anything. They couldn’t regrow limbs, but they could fashion new ones, and then they could laugh about the limbs they’d lost.

Around ten o’clock, a woman in a glittering silver dress got up in front of the stage and started crooning. A few couples took to the dance floor, their bodies pressed close together, the men’s hands wandering in ways we were all supposed to pretend not to see. If it was possible, the haze in the room had only grown thicker. The men were edging toward drunk, and even though I’d been drinking water the whole time, I could feel the hour and the darkness and the jazz music getting to me all the same. I felt heavy, like if I didn’t move soon I might never move again.

Still, we sat. We sat and we talked and we laughed. Some of the men—mostly George and Joe—made noise about stealing a woman away to take a turn around the dance floor, but all the women seemed occupied, so the they never followed through. We didn’t need to add any to our number to have fun, I thought. But then, I had never been one to pine after women.

Eventually everyone stopped ordering drinks. I watched ice cubes shrink and shrink, and when a hand touched my shoulder and I looked up, I realized we had a different waitress now. That seemed a good sign that it was time to close out our tabs. 

“Major, I’ll pay for yours,” George said, leaning around Joe so he could shoot me a cheeky grin.

I wagged my empty glass at him and smiled back. “Knock yourself out.”

“You know, one of these days he’s going to sneak in something from the top shelf when you’re not paying attention, Luz,” Joe said, leaning back over his chest to poke George in the ribs. “Then you’re gonna be up shit creek.”

“That’ll be the day,” Babe cut in.

It was nearing midnight by the time we got up from our chairs and left the basement behind. I expected the street to have emptied given the late hour, but there were even more people around than before, clustered around doorways where light and music spilled out onto the sidewalk, laughing and shouting at each other. Taxis were jammed shoulder to shoulder up and down the street, some of them pulled over waiting for passengers, some circling. All the neon was still lit and shining bright enough I had to squint after being in that dark club. I guessed it was true what they said, about New York being the city that never slept. If anything, it seemed like it was just waking up.

We made it a few steps down the sidewalk when she came out of the shadows and put her hand on my wrist. I startled at first, my heart leaping in my chest before I realized it was just the waitress from the club. Her feathers were gone, and she was covered up in a black coat now. Out here on the street, with her dark hair unpinned and curling around her face, I realized she was younger than I would have guessed, her features softer and more innocent now that she wasn’t trying to extract a hefty tip out of a group of men. 

“Major,” she said, “I’m glad I caught you.”

The rest of the boys had come to a staggering stop so they were strewn up the sidewalk, looking back at me in groups of twos and threes, their faces curious. I waved them away. “Go on ahead,” I said. “I’ll catch up.” Harry shrugged and walked on, and the rest of them followed suit.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” I asked, turning back to her.

“I was hoping you might do me a favor,” she said. She noticed she still had her hand on my arm and pulled it away, then smoothed it down the front of her coat. “Are you going to be in the city long?”

“A while,” I said. I was already trying to work out what she might want with me, but I couldn’t come up with anything. What use could I be to a stranger?

“Would you be willing to come to dinner tomorrow night?” she asked, looking up at me hopefully. “I’d love it if you could meet my brother.”

“Well, I don’t know,” I said, barely containing my shock at the suggestion. I wondered if this was something people in the city did all the time, inviting strangers over for dinner. “I’m here with friends, and I don’t know if I can get away.”

“Oh, please,” she said, her voice suddenly full of desperation. The flirting, simpering woman who had taken our drink orders had vanished, and now she was more like a child, helpless and tugging at my heartstrings. Her hands found my arm again, and she stepped in until I could feel her coat brushing my thighs. “Please, I know it’s a lot to ask, but he’s been doing so poorly, and I don’t know how to help him. If he just had someone he could talk to, maybe he’d…maybe he’d snap out of it.”

I only barely managed not to grimace at her. “All due respect, ma’am, I don’t think men just snap out of these things. Doesn’t he have any friends who fought? Someone who knows him would probably be more help than me.” 

Most men in our generation went off to the war, so if Mr. Nixon needed someone to talk to, I had trouble believing that I was his best hope. Surely there had to be _someone_ else. Someone closer to him. 

“He doesn’t have many friends at all,” the woman said. “And the ones he does have…they found reasons not to enlist.”

She wasn’t doing a great job of selling me on the idea. So her brother was the kind of guy who didn’t make friends and who kept company with men who had avoided their duty to their country. I was certain there would be nothing I could do to help, and that was even if I agreed to abandon the men for the evening. But it had to have taken a lot for her to approach a strange man on the street and beg him to do such a thing, and she looked so forlorn I wasn’t sure I had it in me to refuse her. It was just one evening, after all. Maybe the men would even enjoy some time without me. I got the feeling they felt they had to behave better when I was there.

“Alright,” I said, placing one of my hands over hers. Maybe I was crazy too. I certainly felt like I was, looking into the face of a beautiful stranger under blue-tinted light, the bustle of the street around us an itch in the back of my brain. I felt like I was a million miles away from home. “Alright, I can spare an evening for you.”

“Oh, thank you!” Her face lit up like the neon overhead, and she squeezed my arm. I hoped her excitement wasn’t misplaced.

“I’m staying at the Roosevelt,” I told her. “Can you call tomorrow morning and leave your address?”

“Of course. I don’t think I ever got your name?”

“Dick Winters,” I said, extracting my arm from her grip so I could shake her hand properly, even though it hardly seemed necessary with all the touching we’d been doing already.

“Blanche Nixon,” she said. “Thank you, Mr. Winters. I can’t thank you enough.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t thank me just yet,” I said.

She gave my hand one more squeeze, then took a step back and smiled at me, a real smile that made her look younger and prettier than ever. I couldn’t see anymore how she and the waitress with feathers in her hair could be the same person. She lifted her hand in silent goodbye, and I watched as she turned away and walked to the curb and stuck her hand out. It wasn’t until her raven-black hair disappeared into the back seat of a cab that I finally set off down the sidewalk myself, wondering what I’d just gotten myself into.

When I got back to the hotel, I found the men having a nightcap in the lobby, once again shocking me with their ability to hold their liquor. I stopped by to tell them good night, but Harry followed me out toward the elevators, and the gleam in his eye gave me a pretty good idea of what was on his mind. 

“What did the waitress want?” he asked me as the elevator doors closed us in. “She looked pretty friendly.”

“She needed a favor,” I said. 

“Hmm.” Harry knocked his elbow into mine. “That’s a little forward of her, isn’t it? Asking a favor of a stranger?”

The corner of my mouth curled, but I was a little too tired to play along. “I suppose so.” 

“Well, what’d she want?”

I sighed, figuring there was no way I was getting out of the conversation without telling him the truth. “Her brother, the paratrooper. She wants me to meet him. Said he isn’t doing well since he got back and might benefit from having someone to talk to.”

Harry huffed and scrubbed a hand through his curls. “You sure that’s not just an excuse to invite a good-looking fellow over for dinner?”

“I’m pretty sure,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure at all. I could never tell these things. Once I’d spent a whole church picnic going back and forth to refill Polly Hanes’ cup with lemonade, and it wasn’t until my mother asked me if I was going to invite the poor girl on a date that I realized she wanted my company more than the lemonade. But if it was my company Blanche Nixon wanted, she was going to be disappointed. Not only was I uninterested, but I had agreed to one dinner and only one, and my mind was made up not to abandon the guys any more than that. 

“I don’t know, Dick,” Harry said. “She seemed pretty keen on you. It wouldn’t surprise me if her brother was perfectly fine and she just wanted to see you again.”

I shrugged. “Well, I guess we’ll see, won’t we? Anyway, I’m going over there for dinner tomorrow night, if you can spare me.”

“Oh, I think we’ll survive. Maybe George will talk the guys into visiting a strip joint after all.”

“You think Kitty will understand that?” I asked.

“No, I suppose I’ll have to abstain,” Harry said with a sigh, but he smiled too, and I could tell he wasn’t that sorry about it. I’d never seen a man more happily married than Harry Welsh. There was no ball-and-chain talk with him, none of that grumbling men seemed to do as if it wasn’t their own choice to tie the knot.

The elevator opened on our floor, and we stepped out together and paused at my door. Harry’s own room was a few more down from mine, but it was clear he still had something he wanted to say. I waited patiently while he worked himself up to it, his expression scrunching with discomfort, his arms crossed over his chest. Finally, he said, “Do you think you’ll be able to help? If the brother really is…you know.”

“I’m not sure,” I said. I hesitated a minute, then went on. “You know, Gene wrote to me a lot, right after we got back.”

Harry’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

“Mhm.” It had surprised me too, at the time. I knew the war had given us all a certain bond, but still once it was over I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear from any of the men again. I thought being their leader might have set me too far apart from then. But when I got home, I had some letters waiting for me, and over the next few months, they kept coming, once a week like clockwork. One time, there had been a telegram to schedule a phone call. I’d had to go into town to find a telephone, as my parents didn’t have one, but it had been worth it to hear Gene’s honey-sweet voice on the other end of the line. 

“He pretended at first that he just wanted to keep up with how I was doing,” I said, “but I could tell he was really the one who needed to talk. He saw a lot of the worst of it, you know.”

“I know,” Harry said, frowning. “He seems alright now though, doesn’t he?”

I nodded; he did seem alright. He’d been a little withdrawn at Harry and Kitty’s wedding, but so far on this trip he was more lively, more likely to laugh at others’ stories and join in with those of his own. I couldn’t take credit for that, but I was pretty sure those letters had helped us both. So maybe Blanche Nixon was right, assuming her brother really was having a hard time. Maybe he just needed someone to talk to, someone who could understand what he was going through, to let him know he wasn’t less of a man for his struggles.

“Well, I guess if anyone can help, it’s you,” Harry said. He must have seen I was about to protest, because he held up his hand. “Now, don’t start with the modesty routine. You have that way about you. You’re…” He waved his hand around, like he could scoop the right word out of the air. “A comfort. The men always felt better when you were around.”

“They’d have felt the same about any other leader,” I insisted.

“You mean like Sobel?”

Trust Harry to back me into a corner like that. I rolled my eyes at him. “Okay, maybe not any leader. Any halfway decent one.”

“You were a lot more than halfway decent, Dick.”

His compliments made me uncomfortable, so I shrugged this one off. The way I saw it, the only way to do a job was to do it as well as you could, and I didn’t need praise for that. Anyway, the war was over, and I didn’t see myself as a leader anymore. I didn’t want to be.

“Alright, alright,” Harry said, clearly sensing my discomfort. “Get some sleep. I reckon Carwood might try to get us up early to go to that museum he can’t shut up about.”

I snorted, thinking about how the men were still down there drinking, and how most of them had already been three sheets to the wind by the time we left Jimmy Ryan’s. “He can try.”

After Harry walked away and I went into my room, I couldn’t help but think more about his question, about whether I’d be able to be of any help. Maybe all I’d done for Gene was give him an address to send letters to. Maybe listening wasn’t going to be good enough for a complete stranger, and I wasn’t sure I had any actual insight to provide otherwise. I’d never been one to think too hard about the war, even while I was living through it. My objective had been to think of it as a job I had to do—albeit an unsavory one. Keep the men alive. Make it out alive myself. After I’d done all that, I went home and tried to move on. It wasn’t always easy, but I spent as little time as possible ruminating about everything that had happened. I didn’t have a philosophical take on any of it; I wasn’t sure I had the words it would take to help a man who was struggling to forgive himself or forget what he’d seen. But I had said I would try, and it was too late to change my mind now. I didn’t lose sleep over it that night. In hindsight, maybe I should have.

I woke when the light coming through the tiny gap in the curtains was still gray. Even before the war I’d been an early riser, courtesy of growing up on a farm, but being a soldier only made it worse. Many mornings I found myself wide awake when it was still dark outside, sometimes soaked in sweat from a dream I couldn’t remember, sometimes feeling as peaceful as if there’d never been a war at all. That particular morning I was groggy, disoriented from being in a strange bed, but luckily no nightmares had been able to find me.

It would be hours before all of the men were up and ready, so I showered and then went down to the lobby to have a little breakfast and read the paper. Before I went back upstairs, I stopped by the front desk to see if I had any messages and found that Miss Nixon had called. She left an address and asked that I come around five o’clock. I almost wished she had wanted to do lunch instead, so I could get it over with as quick as possible and return to my vacation, but I couldn’t bring myself to call and request a chance of plans. At least this way I would get to spend the majority of my day out and about with the boys.

The day passed in a blur of sight-seeing. The men moved like a flock of starlings, changing direction seemingly on a whim, and I followed in their wake, glad I was not expected to lead them in this. The art museum gave way to lunch at a tiny diner that Babe pointed out at random. Once we were full of sandwiches and coffee, the late-summer sun started to seem oppressive, but that didn’t stop our wandering. We paused to stare up at the Empire State Building and promised each other we’d come back the next day first thing, before it got too crowded. Eventually we found our way to the park and strolled around in the shade, watching the people and talking amongst ourselves. I kept ending up at the back of the pack, walking by myself and listening to the bits of conversation that floated back to me. It wasn’t a lonely feeling. In fact, it was a good one. It made me glad for things I’d done during the war, things I probably shouldn’t have been glad about, things that had brought that particular group of men through to that moment. 

Eventually it started to creep toward evening, and I had to leave the men and make my way back to the hotel. I’d been sweating all day in the swampy heat, and I wanted to clean up and change before I went to see the Nixons. I put on a nice suit, figuring it would be better to be overdressed than under, and then spent some time fretting about whether I should have picked up something to bring. A bottle of wine or something. Just because I didn’t drink didn’t mean I couldn’t be courteous. It was too late though; I’d just have to make my apologies.

I asked for a taxi in the lobby and went out to meet it with some trepidation. Being chauffeured around by a stranger didn’t sit right with me, but I didn’t know the city well enough to walk, or even if the house was close enough to walk to at all. The car ride certainly _seemed_ to take forever. Traffic didn’t help matters, and my nerves were catching up with me by then. I started to imagine what Blanche’s brother would be like, but my mind kept jumping to worst-case scenarios—catatonia, a terrifying temper, endless weeping—so I had to force my thoughts to other things. I thought about Buck Compton instead, about how a man could be that beaten down and still come back from it. I thought about Bill Guarnere, who, like Joe, had lost his leg but not his sense of humor. There was hope in men like those. Maybe those were the stories I’d tell this Mr. Nixon.

I didn’t realize how much my surroundings had changed until the taxi pulled up the curb and stopped. We had left the traffic-filled, tourist-hampered part of Manhattan and come to a quieter residential neighborhood where both sides of the street were lined with rowhouses shaded by spindly trees with bright-green leaves and cut-off from the street by wrought-iron fences. It was not the kind of neighborhood I had been expecting, and I was so caught off guard that the driver had to clear his throat to remind me to pay him and get out. 

Once I was out on the sidewalk, I dug the scrap of paper out of my pocket and checked the address again. The brownstone in front of me was the right number, but it didn’t seem like the right place. I couldn’t figure how a woman who worked as a waitress in a jazz club could live in a place like that, even if she wasn’t living there alone. It was stately, three stories, with ornate pediments over the windows and a smooth, dark-wood door inlaid with etched glass. As I walked up the front steps, I thought for sure I would be walking back down them in a couple minutes, told I had the wrong house. 

There was a black metal knocker and a bell, and I chose the bell, pushing my thumb into it until I heard the chime deep inside the house. I listened hard, but I didn’t hear anything, no footsteps coming to greet me. I turned on the step and looked up and down the sidewalk, as though someone might come from that way instead, but the street was quiet and empty. Just as I was wishing I’d told the cab to wait for me, there came the sound of a bolt drawing back. 

I whirled around again, and there he was.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to say, I'm going to try _very_ hard to update this weekly, on Saturdays, but knowing me there's a good chance I'll get behind at some point. But right now, the plan is to try to get a chapter out a week. I have a little bit of a buffer built in right now, so hopefully I won't catch up and run myself into the ground. Thanks for your love on the first chapter, guys! I really appreciate it. It helps me keep going. :)

Lewis Nixon was not a pretty sight the first time we met. He was standing there in the doorway looking half dead, squinting out into the sunlight, pale but for the gray smudges under his eyes. Dark, oily hair fell down over his forehead, the few days’ growth on his jaw looked dirty and careless against his sallow skin. His wrinkled shirt gaped at the top like he’d given up before he could finish buttoning it. Sweat gleamed in the hollow of his throat. 

I put on what I hoped was a friendly smile. “Are you Lewis Nixon?”

A mostly empty glass dangled from his fingertips, and the ice cubes clinked as he listed against the door jamb. “Not what you were expecting?” he asked, but he was looking me up and down like I was the unexpected one. Before I could say anything, he added, “You must be the Major.”

“Not anymore.” I took a step closer, meaning to shake his hand, but his right was occupied by the glass so I let my arm fall back to my side. “Call me Dick.”

He appraised me for a moment. His eyes were dark and set under thick brows that seemed too heavy for him to hold up. It made him look melancholy, even when his mouth curled into a smirk. 

“We’ll see,” he said, but he stepped aside to let me into the house and closed the door behind us.

The inside of the house was like a cave. Two skinny rectangles of sunlight fell on the rug, shining in through the door behind, but there was no other light to be found. Green velvet curtains were drawn tight across the windows in the parlor to my left, and none of the lamps were lit. To my right, a straight, narrow staircase with an intricately carved mahogany banister climbed toward a dark second story, and in front of me an equally dark hallway stretched toward the back of the house. I could hear a clock ticking somewhere out of sight, a grandfather clock judging by the deep, ponderous ticks and tocks. 

I took my hat off and placed it on the stand by the door, then followed Nixon into the parlor. It was sumptuously decorated, unlike anything I’d seen before, with pale gold walls and furniture upholstered in red velvet and a beautiful oriental rug covering the majority of the dark wood floor. There was a large, gold-framed mirror over the fireplace, and in front of it a crystal vase with a spray of pink and white delphinium. I thought about the sitting room in my parents’ house with its plain pine furniture and bare floors and sparse decor; I thought about the flowers my mother grew in the garden, like the ones on that fancy mantle but surrounded by dirt and earthworms instead of carved glass and dark wood. Inexplicably, the blood rushed to my face, like I had something to be embarrassed about. I felt sure that Nixon could look at me and know how out of place I was. 

Nixon was paying me little mind though. He made his way to one of the chairs and fell into it, then placed his glass down on a gilt coaster on the coffee table and picked up the cigarette that had been smoldering in the ash tray. I hesitated for a moment to see if he’d invite me to sit, and when he didn’t, I went to the chair across from him and sat anyway. 

“Did your sister tell you to expect me?” I asked. I couldn’t say for sure, but based on his unfocused gaze and the way his posture slumped, I guessed he had been drinking for a while.

“She did,” he said, grinning like I’d said something funny. “She should have been home by now, but I guess she’s been held up.”

I fidgeted with the seam on the cushion next to my thigh and tried to think of what to do, whether I should make small talk or broach the subject I’d gone there to broach. “Mr. Nixon—”

He cut me off, making an affronted sound and shaking his head. “Don’t call me that. Nix, Lew, or if you want to be obstinate about it, Lewis. Those are your choices.”

“Alright, uh, Nix,” I said carefully, testing the strange moniker out. “Have…you lived here long?”

“In this house? No,” he said, then threw back a decent-sized gulp of whatever was in his glass. It was amber-colored, so I guessed whiskey, but I was hardly the authority on such things. “Born and mostly raised in New York though. What about you?” He peered at me, his eyes narrowed. “You don’t look like you’re from around here.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

Nix shrugged. “You live here long enough, you get a feel for these things.”

“I’m from Pennsylvania,” I said. “I’m just here for…a visit.”

“And my sister bullied you into taking time out of your vacation to come here, huh? She must really have taken a shine to you.” The way he said it, I could tell he knew what Blanche’s real motives were. It made me feel uncomfortable, like he was toying with me. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that, despite Blanche’s best intentions, her brother might not be interested in anyone’s help. 

I thought about being frank with him and telling him I knew as well as he did why Blanche had invited me, but before I had a chance, the front door opened and shut and the woman herself walked into the room.

She came in like a whirlwind, her arms full of brown paper bags, stopping there at the entrance to the room only just long enough for her eyes to sweep over us once. She was wholly transformed from the previous night. She looked poised, elegant, like I had imagined all women from New York looked, with white gloves on her hands and a pocketbook tucked up under her arm and the hem of her pale green dress swishing around her calves as she walked by. I noticed now how similar she and her brother were in appearance—same dark brown eyes and hair, same melancholy brow, same slightly dimpled chin. She went without a word through a door I assumed led to the kitchen, and came back with her hands free and her mouth pinched with irritation. Without even glancing our way, she hurried to the bay window at the front of the room and threw back the curtains, flooding the room with sunlight and making Nix flinch and raise a hand to shield his eyes. 

“Honestly, Lewis,” she said, crossing the room to him. She hadn’t acknowledged me at all. “I asked you to get cleaned up.”

Nix let her take the glass out of his hand and watched forlornly as she set it on the coffee table behind her. It was empty anyway, but that didn’t seem to matter. Blanche turned back to him and jerked at the open flaps of his shirt, buttoning the top two buttons with quick, efficient fingers, continuing her scolding all the while. “We hardly ever have guests. The least you could do is make an effort when we do.”

He didn’t say anything in his own defense, but she didn’t seem to expect him to. I wondered if she had even noticed me sitting there, if I had somehow blended into the chair or managed to wish myself invisible. As I watched, she let out a long-suffering but surprisingly affectionate sigh and took Nix’s face in her hands, leaning in to kiss him on the forehead. He grumbled and batted her away, but I could see something like regret in his eyes. I was surprised by that. So far he hadn’t seemed like the kind of man who cared much whether he disappointed anyone, even his own sister.

Blanche straightened up and turned to me at last, her expression apologetic. “I’m sorry, Mr. Winters. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”

“Oh, it’s alright,” I said. “We were just getting to know each other.”

“I see he didn’t even get you a drink,” she said to Nix as she looked down at my empty hands. “Lew, would you at least _try_ to be a good host while I go and get dinner started?”

“It’s really alright—” I started to say, but Blanche waved a hand at me, cutting me off.

“Now, don’t go and put yourself on his side. He’s incorrigible enough as it is.”

“I’m still in the room, in case you forgot,” Nix grumbled. Then, shakily, he rose to his feet. “Go cook, Blanche. I’ll get the man a drink.”

When she left the room, he turned to me and shrugged, rolled his eyes like we were old friends in the habit of sharing in each other’s exasperation. It was strange, considering how he’d been antagonizing me a moment before his sister came in. Maybe her scolding had got to him. Somehow I doubted it.

“Anyway, what’ll you have, Dick?” he asked. He stubbed out the butt of his cigarette in the ash tray, then got up and went to a cabinet and opened it to reveal an array of glass bottles. 

“Just water would be fine,” I said. 

He looked over his shoulder at me and his eyebrows shot up. “Just water? You don’t need to be polite. I’m offering.”

“I don’t drink,” I said, feeling self-conscious. 

“Is that so?” He turned away from the cabinet and leaned against it, looking at me like I was an exotic animal in a zoo. “Not a drop, huh? Not at all?”

“Not at all,” I confirmed. “But don’t let that stop you.”

“Oh, I won’t.” He reached behind him without looking and pulled out a decanter, then walked to his abandoned glass on the coffee table and poured himself out another inch or two. He didn’t bother to replace the bottle in the cabinet, just left it sitting on the table and went to get a jug of water and a glass for me. He thrust both of them into my hands so I could serve myself, and I did, then placed the jug on the table next to his whiskey and kept the glass cradled in my hand. I didn’t see another coaster anywhere. 

“So what are you, a Quaker or something?” Nix asked as he fell back into his chair and picked up his glass again. 

“Or something,” I said. Then, eager to change the subject, I rushed on. “What do you do, Nix?”

He turned his gaze away from me and reached for a pack of cigarettes on the table in front of him. I watched as he shook out a fresh one and lit it, then took a deep drag. It wasn’t until he was blowing out a cloud of smoke that he met my eyes again. He held the pack out to me, but I shook my head, so he shrugged and tossed it back on the table. “I don’t do much,” he said. “I don’t do anything, in fact.”

“Oh,” I said. “But what—”

He cut me off with a quiet laugh and shifted around in his seat, resting his elbow on the back of his chair like he was settling in to tell a good story. “My family owns a business down in Jersey. A nitration plant. I was supposed to take it over from my dad after the war, but…it didn’t exactly work out.” I made a sympathetic sound, but he waved it away with the impatience of someone who was used to being pitied and hated it. “Dear old Dad didn’t really want me there anyway. I wasn’t the picture perfect businessman he wanted me to be. I think he was actually relieved when I told him I was moving back to the city. You know the story of the prodigal son, right?” I nodded. “Picture that, except I’ll never go back.”

The prodigal son had squandered his untimely inheritance on women and gambling. I wondered, briefly, what Nix was squandering his on—but just as my eyes landed on his glass of whiskey, I mentally chided myself. It was a sad story if I read between the lines, worthy of sympathy rather than scorn. It sounded like his father was not an understanding man. Facing a rejection like that could only have rubbed salt in whatever wounds Nix brought home with him, and maybe it wasn’t such a surprise that he was sitting there drunk in the early evening, or that Blanche had approached me for help.

And how did Blanche fit in to all this, I wondered? If Nix’s father had sent him on his way with his some share of a family fortune, that explained the nice house, but it made me question why a girl from such a privileged background was moonlighting as a cocktail waitress while her brother sat idle at home.

“I had trouble too,” I said after a moment, in a bid to establish some common ground. “After the war, I mean. It’s not easy to adjust. You’re lucky you have your sister.” 

He snorted at me, but I thought I saw something other than amusement flash in his eyes for a moment, something like that hint of regret I saw on his face when Blanche was scolding him earlier. “I’m lucky, sure. Her? That’s a different story.”

He took another long pull on his cigarette and then picked up his glass and drained the whole thing in one gulp. More often than not, that was the only way I saw him drink—all or nothing. He would drain a glass in one gulp or two or three, swallowing whiskey down easy as water. Easier, maybe.

“What division were you with?” I asked, attempting to pry from a different angle. “In the Army.”

It wasn’t the most elegant of segues, but I still wasn’t expecting the change that came over him. His law clenched and his hand tightened on his glass until his knuckles were white and I was afraid the thing would shatter. His eyes went wide and darted toward the foyer before snapping back to my face. The way he looked, you’d think I’d asked him how many men he killed. “What does it matter?”

I was at a loss. Even if the war was a tricky topic, I had thought it an innocent enough question to start with. I set my water down on the table, forgetting all about the lack of coaster, and laid my hands face-up on my knees, as if to show him I had nothing up my sleeve. “Your sister said you were a paratrooper. I was too. With the 101st.”

He stared at me and kept staring while he leaned forward and refilled his glass. I noticed a slight tremor in his hand, but I didn’t know whether it was from the drink or from anxiety. It could easily have been both.

“I was with the 17th,” he said at last, through clenched teeth. 

I knew a little something about the other airborne divisions, through word of mouth mostly, so at once I knew that Nix hadn’t been there D-Day or in Market Garden, but that he had been at Bastogne, where his division had suffered heavy casualties at a place that came to be known as Dead Man’s Ridge. After that, the 17th had gone on to jump in Operation Varsity, and one of their regiments had lost a good chunk of their aircraft to German artillery. I didn’t know how much of that Nix had witnessed firsthand, or if any of it was what had him looking paranoid and clutching the arm of his chair now, but I couldn’t ask him. It was the kind of thing a man had to volunteer, and he clearly wasn’t in much of a sharing mood—not when it came to this subject, anyway.

“I can see you don’t want to talk about it,” I said, hoping I could break some of the tension by acknowledging his discomfort.

He let out a short bark of a laugh, but it was a hollow sound, devoid of any emotion at all. “You think I don’t know that’s why you’re here? You think I don’t know that my sister has taken to picking out strangers in bars now and telling them about her lousy bum of a brother?”

“I don’t think you’re a bum,” I said, and I was surprised by how much I meant it. His behavior was alarming, but the more I learned about him, the less I blamed him for it. He looked like he didn’t believe me but desperately wanted to, and that stirred something in me, a protective feeling not unlike what I felt for the men who had served under me. 

“Give it time,” he said bitterly. “I could convince you yet.”

“You’re welcome to try.”

His mouth curled a little at that, amusement flashing in his eyes before he turned his gaze down to his lap. I felt almost proud of myself for catching him off guard. He was clearly expecting to have an easy time of pushing me away, but now that I could picture him huddling in a foxhole in Bastogne, watching his friends die, I was more inclined than ever to go easy on him. 

“You talk,” Nix said to me, making a supercilious gesture that might have made me prickle with annoyance if it weren’t for the smile still playing with the corners of his mouth. “Tell me about yourself.”

And so I did. I told him all there was to tell about Lancaster, my schooling, enlisting in the Army, my experiences during officer training and jump training. When I ran out of all that, I continued through the war, giving a summary of the battles I’d fought in, the places I’d been. I hoped that if I kept talking, eventually he would jump in and share some details of his own experience, but he just watched me in silence, his eyes dark and unreadable, taking drinks at regular intervals and refilling his glass whenever it got empty. I had a feeling he was genuinely interested in what I was saying, but there was still something unsettling about the one-sidedness of the conversation. By the time I had run out of things to say, I wanted to reach across the table and drag some words out of his throat, any words at all.

“What about now?” he asked when I had been silent for a little too long. “What will you do now?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out,” I admitted. “That’s why I’m here.”

He peered at me, his gaze oddly knowing. “I thought you said you were just visiting?”

I shrugged and reached for my water again, more to have something to do with my hands again than anything else. “I am, but I...” I trailed off, realizing that there was no easy way to explain to him what I was really doing in New York. My reasons for leaving Lancaster seemed trivial in light of what he’d told me about himself—his failure in joining the family business, his father’s rejection. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was being ungrateful. I could have had a decent life back home. Maybe even a happy one.

“I’m using this time to think through my options,” I said at last.

To my surprise, Nix hummed like he understood, then took a drag from his cigarette. As he exhaled, he asked, “You got a wife? Kids?”

“No, no,” I said. “Neither.” It wasn’t until he grinned at me that I realized how quickly I had answered. Too quickly.

“No love in your life?” he asked, goading now. “Why bother surviving the war at all?”

There was something in the tone of his voice, a conspiratorial sort of sarcasm, and when our eyes met I was surprised to feel a sort of understanding pass between us. Inexplicably, my heart started to beat a little faster. 

“You?” I asked cautiously.

“My wife divorced me while I was still over there,” he said, then looked away. “There’s a kid. A girl. I don’t see her.”

I couldn’t fight back a grimace. “I’m sorry.” 

He shook his head, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “Don’t be. It’s better for everyone. Take my word for it.”

I wanted to argue with him. I even opened my mouth to do it before I realized I didn’t have an argument to make. “Still,” I said instead. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Are you?” he asked flatly, arching an eyebrow. “Well, aren’t you kind.”

His was mocking me, but if the goal was to get my sympathy to fade, it didn’t work. The longer I sat there with him, the more I started to get a picture of what was wrong. Nix had been rejected by his wife, rejected by his father. His sister had told me he didn’t have many friends. The intermittent abrasiveness he’d shown me since I arrived reminded me of the quills on a porcupine—more defense than offense. It made him difficult, but it didn’t hurt my feelings.

Lucky for both of us, I didn’t have the chance to fight with him about my relative kindness. Just then, the door opened behind me and I turned around to see Blanche standing there, looking equal parts apologetic and eager. “Are you hungry, Mr. Winters?”

Nix and I followed her through the door into the kitchen, then through into the dining room. I could tell it wasn’t a room that was used often. There was a thick layer of dust on the sideboard and the china cabinet, all of the dishes inside fuzzy with disuse. I saw a wispy spiderweb in one corner near the ceiling, undulating in some undetectable current. The air was close and musty, and I had to lace my fingers behind my back to resist the urge to tug my tie loose so I could take a good breath. 

“You sit here,” Blanche said to me, touching one of the chairs. The table had room for twelve but was set for three. Nix took a seat at the head of the table, and I sat down to his right. I noticed Nix’s glass had managed to find itself half-full of whiskey again—he must have filled it once more before leaving the parlor—but I looked away quickly when he caught me staring. It was a wonder he wasn’t _under_ the table, just from the amount I’d seen him drink since I arrived. He must have had a lot of practice to hold his liquor that well.

Blanche had done a fine job with dinner. There was white fish in some kind of spicy tomato broth, a green salad, crusty bread. My palate was far from sophisticated, but it all tasted just fine to me, and I dug in with gusto. I was glad to have something to occupy myself with, because whatever tentative camaraderie that had been building between myself and Nix seemed to have evaporated once Blanche rejoined us. For the first several minutes, Blanche ignored Nix almost entirely, instead lobbing questions at me about how I was liking New York and whether I found The Roosevelt to be to my liking and what plans I had for sight-seeing. She became increasingly fidgety as time went on, until it was obvious she was working up to something. Tension built between my shoulder blades while I waited for her to come out with it.

“Lew, did Mr. Winters tell you he was a paratrooper too?” she asked at least, a forkful of salad halfway to her mouth.

“He mentioned it.” Nix was mostly pushing his broth back and forth in his bowl and carving his fish into smaller and smaller pieces. The sheen of sweat on his pale face worried me, and I had the sudden urge to get up and force bite after bite into this mouth until every plate at the table was clean. 

“He and I were in different divisions,” I said to Blanche, tearing a chunk out of my bread. “We weren’t in the same place at the same time very often.”

“Oh,” Blanche said. She sounded disappointed. “Was…was it very different? It seems as though…well, I don’t really know, but…”

“No two battles were really alike,” I said. “The same battle could even have gone differently for different divisions.” Now that I’d gotten started, I found that talking was easier than staying silent and fretting over the clamminess of Nix’s skin. I kept on. “Take D-Day. Some of us were dropping from planes, some flying the planes, some coming in on boats.” 

“I wasn’t at Normandy,” Nix said, then took a drink, ice cubes clattering against his teeth. Once he’d sat his glass down again, he continued, “I was still in England then, training.”

It was more information than I expected him to volunteer, so even though I had already known that, I pretended to be interested, raising my eyebrows and leaning forward on one elbow. “What about Market Garden?”

“Didn’t make that jump either.” His words were starting to sound sticky, like he was having trouble moving from one to the next. He raised his spoon to his mouth, and I felt relieved when he actually slurped the broth from it and then took a plump piece of fish between his teeth. He continued speaking with his mouth full. “Bastogne was my big introduction to the European Theater.”

“That’s rough,” I said.

“Any rougher than you had it? I heard you all were exhausted. Under-supplied.” He stared steadily at me, as if daring me to refute it, but I only shrugged.

“I think it was rough for all of us.”

“I can’t even imagine,” Blanche said. She was looking at her brother, watching him like a mother watches a child who’s be introduced to new playmates, waiting for the moment someone would knock him down and steal his toys. Or, in this case, maybe vice versa. 

“Don’t try to imagine,” he said sharply, snapping his head toward her. Then, when he noticed her slight flinch, he softened. “You don’t have to think about it, honey. You’re lucky you don’t.”

“I know.” She reached out and curled her fingers around his wrist. “I know.”

The interaction made me uncomfortable, and I looked down at my bowl, trailing my spoon through it idly. A part of me, a small part, felt irritated with Nix for not appreciating his sister’s concern and not doing more to alleviate it. My own family didn’t seem to know how to relate to me at all after I came back from Europe. My sister tiptoed around me like she was expecting me to break down at any moment, and my father hardly spoke two words. My mother acted like I had come down with some incurable illness, fixing all my favorite meals and insisting on doing chores that I was perfectly capable of doing myself. I was sure they all cared in their own way, but I had a feeling if I had shown the slightest hint of combat exhaustion, they wouldn’t have known what to do with me. Maybe Blanche didn’t know either, but she was trying. She cared. She wanted to know what her brother was going through, even if it hurt, so she could help make it better.

“Mr. Winters,” Blanche said, looking over at me.

I cut her off. “Please. It’s Dick.”

“Dick,” she repeated dutifully, then looked down at the tablecloth. “I’m sorry to ask, but…did you lose anyone? Anyone close to you?”

It was hardly polite dinner conversation, and I almost told her so, but I saw what she was trying to do. Maybe if I opened up, then Nix would too. I cleared my throat and tried to swallow down my discomfort. “I got lucky,” I admitted. “My closest friends all made it through. I did lose men…men who were my responsibility. But it could have been much worse.”

I looked over at Nix, but he was back to tearing apart the fish in his bowl. Blanche was looking at him too, expectation in her expression, waiting for something he wasn’t going to give her. It was clear he had no intention of adding anything to the conversation. All the alcohol and the presence of a stranger had done almost nothing to loosen his tongue. I couldn’t help but hope then that she would stop trying, let us finish our dinner in peace, then let me leave. 

“How do you like working at Jimmy Ryan’s?” I asked her, figuring the best I could do at that point was steer the conversation in another direction. But when she cut her eyes to me, I realized I’d made a mistake. She looked worried—scared, even. Her fingers twisted in her napkin, and her shoulders rolled inward like she was trying to make herself smaller. Like she was trying to avoid drawing attention to herself. Attention from Nix.

Despite her obvious distress, she forced a smile. “It’s a job.”

Nix’s spoon fell into his bowl with a clatter. He was staring hard at the side of her face, but she refused to look at him. “Ask her why,” he said to me, derision in his voice. “Ask her why she works there.”

“Lewis, please,” Blanche hissed.

“Go on, ask her,” Nix said, and jerked his head at me. “You have to be wondering, right? Why a girl like her would be working in a place like that?”

“It’s none of my—”

“What, her life is none of your concern but _mine_ is?” He lifted his glass to his mouth, but it was empty. When he noticed, he scowled and put it back down on the table. “Fine, if you won’t ask her, I’ll tell you myself.” 

But he didn’t go on. It was obvious he didn’t want to. As much as he was struggling to push me away, and to punish his sister for her meddling, he couldn’t bring himself to drag her through the mud, not even as intoxicated as he was. He turned his eyes down to the table and blinked slowly, his mouth turning down at the corners. I watched, half holding my breath, as a bead of sweat slid out from his hairline and rolled across his temple. I watched as his fingers flexed against the tablecloth, like he was thinking about grabbing it and yanking. It couldn’t have been more than a second or two of tense silence, but it felt like much longer. Long enough for me to want to come right out and ask him what it was he was so afraid of. 

Blanche stood up then, her chair screeching against the hardwood. “Come on, Lewis. I think it’s time to get you to bed.”

“Let me,” I said, getting to my feet as well. I didn’t want to think of her struggling up the steps with him, wrestling with his boneless weight. “Please.”

“No, I couldn’t—”

But before she could stop me, I went to Nix’s side and got him under the arm. It was easy enough to haul him to his feet, but then slumped against me, making me stagger. Blanche must have seen then that she needed my help, because she backed a few steps away, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead.

“I usually just let him sleep in a chair if he gets like this,” she said. “I don’t know what to do with him.”

I had a feeling she meant more than just the struggle of getting him up the stairs alone. I’d failed to do anything to solve the problem she’d invited me there to solve, but I could at least take care of that part of it.

“It’s no trouble,” I said. “Where…?”

“Top of the stairs, turn left. His room is at the end of the hall.”

“I’m fine,” Nix said, hot against my neck. He did push himself straighter for half a second, but then fell against me again. “I’m not a goddamn invalid.”

“Of course you aren’t,” I said, and started to guide him from the room.

The sun had fully set outside, turning the house into a dark and treacherous maze. I moved slowly as I navigated us through the kitchen and then down the front hall to the stairs, one arm wrapped tight around Nix’s waist, my shoulder shoved up under his arm. He was putting one foot in front of the other, but only barely, each step dragging a little more than the last and his head lolling against my shoulder. The whiskey was so strong on his breath that I swear I felt a little drunk just from smelling it. It seemed to be leaking out of his very pores. 

How I got him up those stairs, I’ll never know. When I stood at the bottom of them, they seemed to stretch endlessly up into the dark, and even when we were halfway up, it looked like we had another twice as many again to get through. I’d had harder slogs in my life, and had carried greater weights, but something about that particular night, that particular house, made it seem impossible. 

“Help me out here,” I grunted when we were only a few steps from the top and I could feel my strength threatening to give way. I had nightmarish visions of us tumbling down the stairs in a tangle of limbs, breaking both of our necks or bashing our heads in on the steps, leaving a morbid scene for Blanche to find. Blood and gray matter, things I wished I couldn’t picture so easily. Luckily, Nix roused himself enough to take a couple coordinated steps, and finally we were at the top. I shifted my grip on him so I could slap at the light switch on the wall, then gave him a little jab in the ribs to get him moving again.

Nix’s room was more spartan than I would have expected, given the lavishness of the rest of the house. The only furniture was a bed, on which I counted three quilts and more pillows than one person could need; a hulking armoire with a mirror in one of the doors; and a roll-top desk that was cluttered with books and letters. Heavy, dark blue curtains hung in both of the windows, pulled shut, blocking out the moon and the streetlights. It was only by the light in the hall that I could see at all. 

I let go of Nix and gave him a little push to get him sitting on the edge of his bed. He slumped there and put his head in his hands, and I didn’t know what to do then. Did I turn around and leave him there? Did I tuck him in like a child? I wished I had thought to get some water in him before I dragged him up the stairs, but I’d just have to hope he was used to the drink enough by now that he didn’t have much to fear in the way of a hangover. It’s strange that even then I was worrying about how best to take care of him.

Just when I was on the cusp of backing out of the room, he lifted his head and looked at me blearily. “Why are you here? And don’t bullshit me. Are you chasing after my sister?”

“I’m not interested in you sister,” I said. 

Nix narrowed his eyes. “’S ‘at so?”

“I just wanted to help. Here.” I found myself kneeling suddenly at his feet, my fingers cradling the bones of his ankle and reaching for the heel of his shoe. It was a silly gesture, I realized too late. My face grew hot, and I was grateful that the darkness hid it from him. He made a little amused sound in the back of his throat and put a hand on my shoulder—to steady himself, I assumed. I didn’t shrug it off.

“You’re just a helpful guy, aren’t you?” Nix said. “A regular knight in shining armor.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. I fell silent as I peeled off his shoes, first one and then the other. I could feel each one of his fingers like an individual brand, his grip on me just shy of too tight, like he was afraid I might run off. Even when I was done and had lined his shoes up next to the bed, I felt loathe to move. It seemed like it would be cruel to pull away from that desperate grasp. Instead, I put a hand gingerly on his knee and looked up at him. “Is there anything else I can do for you, before I go?”

He looked so pale in the dark. Just enough light trickled in from the hall to make the sweat on his face shine, and I had the strangest urge to use the sleeve of my jacket to wipe it away, to give him some dignity in those moments before I got up to leave. I thought I would never see him again, but I also thought I was going to have trouble forgetting this night, and this moment in particular. Both because I’d failed to do what I came to do, and because he was looking at me like he suddenly believed I could do it and wished he’d seen it sooner.

For a moment I thought he’d open his mouth and relieve himself of the rest of his burden after all, but instead he lifted the hand that was on my shoulder and laid it on the side of my face. His palm was hot and sticky; it made my hot face burn even hotter, and it was all I could do not to flinch away. “I think you’re too late,” he said, then repeated, forlornly, “Too late.”

I held my breathe. His gaze was unfocused, like he wasn’t even seeing me anymore—like he was picturing someone else. His other hand was fisted in the bedspread, but it didn’t keep him from canting forward, bringing our faces too close together. For a tense moment, I thought he might kiss me. Or maybe I would kiss him. I realized I didn’t think it was such a bad idea in the same moment that I realized he would let me. There was no sense in it, no reason for me not to be turned completely cold by his drunknness or his display downstairs. But he was a lonely, and maybe I was too, if I thought about it. Maybe we weren’t so different, him and I—just running away from different problems in different ways. Him to a bottle, me to New York. Both of us trying to figure out where we fit in this post-war world.

Slowly, and half without meaning to, I covered his hand with my own. His fingers flexed against the side of my face, then relaxed, and his eyes slipped closed as if he couldn’t bear to keep them open any longer. I closed mine too, squeezing them shut tight as I turned my face into his palm and pressed a kiss there, a kiss that made him draw a harsh, ragged breath, like a man dying. I lingered for longer than I should have, willing comfort to flow from me into him through the places we were touching. This was one thing I could do. One thing I could give him.

Then, silently, I let go of his hand and stood up. He didn’t open his eyes to watch me go out of the room, and he didn’t say anything to me either. I didn’t tell him goodbye.

Downstairs, all the lights were still off, but I could see Blanche sitting on the couch in the living room, turned toward the window with her legs tucked up underneath her and the back of her hand pressed to her mouth. She didn’t seem to have heard me come down, so I hovered in the doorway for a moment and then cleared my throat. 

“Sorry,” I said, when she startled. “He’s all settled up there.”

She got to her feet and walked across the room to me. I could see her shoes lying on their side under the coffee table, and barefoot she didn’t even come up to my chin. Still, she now seemed less fragile to me than ever. Anyone who had to deal with the broken man upstairs night after night had to be made of strong stuff, and I could see it now in the determined set of her shoulders and the brave smile she flashed up at me.

“Thank you, Dick,” she said, as if I had done her some wonderful favor. “I’m sorry you had to see him like that.”

“Don’t apologize,” I said. “I’m the one who’s sorry. Sorry this didn’t go like you hoped.”

“It was all a pipe dream anyway.” She brushed her hair absently out of her face and then turned to look out the window again. I wondered if she was thinking of running away, leaving Nix behind. I wondered if that was what she’d been daydreaming about when I had come down. As if reading my mind, she smiled sadly, and said, “Do you want to know what my brother was going to tell you? About me?”

I watched her profile and stayed silent, unsure of the right thing to say.

“He thinks I work at the club to spite him,” she continued. “For the first year that he lived here, after the war, I was trying so hard. I tried to get him out of the house. I tried…” She waved her hand, like she was brushing away cobwebs. She still wasn’t looking at me. “The people in our social circle…they might overlook some drinking, some eccentricity, but many of them didn’t fight. Money will buy you out of a lot of things, including deferment if you know the right people to talk to. Most of them didn’t understand why Lewis enlisted in the first place, and they certainly weren’t going to understand when he came back the way he did. I got tired of sitting in rooms with people I didn’t really like, pretending to laugh about…about frivolous things. I alienated all my friends. I…” 

Finally, she turned back to me. I expected there to be tears in her eyes, but she looked as composed as ever, despite the heaviness of her words. “He thinks I’m slumming it to get back at him, but the truth is, the only time I can breathe is when I’m there. The other waitresses, they have boyfriends who fought. Husbands. They understand when I’ve had a bad day, or when I have to leave early because Lewis has called. I’ve tried to explain it to him, to tell him it’s not his fault, but…well, Dad blames him. Mom blames him.” Her mouth quirked into a slight grin. “And maybe it’s really _them_ I’m spiting, anyway. Dad is absolutely livid that all his peers think his children are living in a den of debauchery. But Lew…he takes all of it very hard.”

I put a hand on her shoulder, my heart constricting with compassion. And suddenly my compassion for her brother increased tenfold as well. There had to be a lot of good in him for his sister to be so loyal, so disdainful of anyone who didn’t understand him or wouldn’t overlook his flaws.

“I’m sure he appreciates you more than you know,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure of that at all.

She smiled at me and covered my hand with hers, just for a moment. “You’re a good man. I can tell. I could tell the moment I saw you, which is why I hoped…”

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” I said.

She patted my hand once more, then let her arm fall back to her side, her smile becoming forced. “I’ll call you a cab,” she said. Then, she disappeared down the hall.

It wasn’t late when I made it back to the hotel, but I felt exhausted all the same. The miasma of booze that shrouded Nix had rubbed off on me, and smelling it the whole ride home made me queasy and eager to get back to my room and take a shower. I got out of the cab and went inside, intending to make a beeline for the elevator, but I hardly made it a few steps before I almost ran right into Gene and Babe, who looked like they were on their way out.

“Major!” Babe said, saluting me facetiously, with a smile on his face. “You’re just in time. We’re headed out for a drink.”

“Oh, no thanks,” I said, but before I could make any more excuses, there were the rest of the men—Ron and Carwood with their heads bent together, caught up in conversation; George and Joe wearing twin grins of anticipation; and Harry bringing up the rear. When Harry saw me, he lifted his hand in greeting, then darted around the others to take me by the arm and pull me aside.

“You go ahead,” he called to the rest of them. “Save us a seat.”

The men shrugged in tandem and chorused their goodbyes before heading out into the night. I looked at Harry gratefully. “Thanks,” I said. “I really just wanted to go up to the room.”

“Oh, I wasn’t saving you,” Harry said. “I want to know how dinner went.” His grin told me he still believed Blanche Nixon had been angling for a date, but I shook my head at him, and he must have noticed the weariness on my face. He sobered up pretty quickly. “That bad, huh?”

“Worse than I expected,” I admitted. “I wasn’t much help. I’m not sure anyone could be.”

“Well, damn.” Harry rubbed the back of his neck and scuffed his toe on the marble floor. “At least you showed up, right? It’s more than most people would’ve done for a stranger.”

“I guess so,” I said, though privately I didn’t think just showing up counted for much. “Anyway, if it’s alright, I think I’ll just head up to bed. It’s been a long night.”

“Sure, sure,” Harry said agreeably. “Sightseeing tomorrow, so I don’t know that the rest of us will be out late anyway.”

He clapped me on the shoulder, and I thought I saw concern on his face before he turned away, but I was glad he wasn’t pressing further about what had happened. I wouldn’t have gotten any pleasure out of telling the story of my night, and I didn’t think he would have gotten much out of hearing it. I had resolved not to think about it anymore, to enjoy the rest of my time in New York and forget all about Lewis Nixon.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up, I'm probably going to be posting every other week rather than every week for the next two chapters, because I have company coming into town and then I'm going out of town myself a couple weeks after that! But I am starting to run out of the breathing room I'd built for myself, so that should be good. So look for the next chapter in two weeks instead of next week! :)
> 
> And thanks for all the support from those of you who are reading it so far. I really appreciate it! <3

The view from the top of the Empire State Building was remarkable. The city stretched out farther than I had even imagined, ranks upon ranks of buildings lined up all the way to the river and beyond. Down below, people and cars rushed like rivers through the streets. They were so far away, so small, that I was surprised at how well I could hear them—the sounds of car horns and laughter and people whistling for taxis. 

It was another warm day, but there was enough breeze that high up to make it pleasant, so we lingered on the observation deck for a while. Carwood stood at my side and talked about what a feat of engineering the building was, and I listened with interest, happy to have something other than my own thoughts to focus on. Because as much as I had told myself I was going to put Lewis and Blanche Nixon from my mind, they were all I could think about. I wondered whether every night was as bad for Nix as the previous one had been. I wondered if Blanche was ever going to get fed up and leave. I wondered what kind of unfair world we lived in, where a man could go off to fight for his country and no one wanted to deal with him once he came back.

But as Carwood talked, I focused half on his voice and half on the view of the city and tried to stop myself from worrying about things I could do nothing to fix. Ron eventually wandered over, cigarette in hand, and started telling me and Carwood about the plane that had crashed into the building in ‘45. It had punched a good-sized hole in the facade and killed fourteen people, he told us in that flat, emotionless way of his. And yet most of the floors were open for business just two days later. I was amazed that a plane could hit a building and not knock it down, but there was something comforting about it, to know we were standing in a place that had survived something like that. 

Eventually Ron dragged Carwood away to show him a view from the other side of the observation deck. I watched them go—their shoulders brushing, their arms brushing—and felt a spark of recognition. Their affinity for each other had been obvious to me for a while, but maybe it was more than just affinity. Or maybe I was reading too much into things. I thought back to the previous night again, and the feeling of Nix’s clammy palm against my mouth, and my stomach twisted with residual embarrassment. I shouldn’t have been so sentimental, even if I was pretty sure I’d never see him again.

I was still mentally kicking myself when Gene sidled up. He had been taking turns with Harry and George on one of the telescopes, but when he saw me standing alone, he came over and leaned against the railing next to me. After a moment’s companionable silence, he tilted his head toward mine and said, “I heard about last night.” 

I sighed, equal parts exasperated and resigned. “Word travels fast, I guess.”

“Oh, don’t be sore at Harry. He didn’t tell us much. Just that the waitress from last night was hoping for a pal for her brother, but it didn’t work out.”

“That’s all there is to know,” I said. I tried to give him a stern look, but judging by the way he grinned at me, it didn’t work. 

“It wasn’t enough that you spent all that time taking care of Easy. Now you’re gonna start collecting strays too?”

I huffed and shook my head. “Well, like you said, it didn’t work out.”

“But here you are, with this breathtaking view in front of you, looking like you’re a million miles away.” He knocked his elbow into mine. “Obviously it’s eating you.”

I leaned heavily on the chest-high wall in front of us, the only thing separating us from a long drop to the sidewalk below. Earlier I’d seen a woman approach the barrier tentatively, look down, and then back away quickly, a hand over her heart. Hers was probably the normal reaction. As I stared down the side of the building, I waited for my stomach to lurch, but the moment of vertigo never came. 

“It doesn’t seem right,” I said. “We go over there, we come back, and they give us a little money for school or a house and send us on our way, like that’s all it takes to go one with life. Does that seem right to you?”

I could feel him looking at me and reluctantly turned my head to meet his gaze. He was squinting into the sun, concern in his eyes and in the tension around his mouth. “Are you having…trouble, sir?”

That ‘sir’ made me wince. “No, no. That’s not what I meant.” I wanted to explain to him what was bothering me, the injustice of a world that put soldiers on pedestals and got uncomfortable when they showed weakness, but I couldn’t find the right words for it. And maybe I was making mountains out of molehills anyway. Most of us were doing okay, weren’t we? Harry had a wife now. Carwood and myself had gotten through school. Everyone else was holding down jobs. Maybe it didn’t make sense for me to see one man who was falling through the cracks and proclaim the whole system flawed.

But it was hard not to think Nix sitting on his bed in the dark, his head in his hands. 

“I just think anyone who puts their life on the line for their country deserves better,” I said.

Gene stared at me a moment longer, then shrugged and turned away to look out at the view again. “We all have to deal with it our own way. It just takes time. That’s what you told me.”

Maybe that had seemed like a helpful thing to say at the time, but it sounded like a useless platitude to me now. Maybe in two more years, or five more, or ten more, even Nix would have emerged from his fog, but so much could go wrong before then. Time was a luxury not everyone had.

But before I had the chance to say as much, Harry and George wandered over, evidently bored with the telescope, and suggested it was time we all move on. If there was one thing that the view from the Empire State Building had proved, it was that we had a lot of city to see.

After my talk with Gene, I did do a little better job of keeping my thoughts from Nix. By the time we all went back to the hotel that evening, I had only thought of him once more, and that was because Ron pulled me aside at one point and told me he thought my going to dinner at the Nixons’ was “admirable”. I was tempted to have a little talk with Harry about his tendency to share a little too much, but I knew he didn’t mean anything by it. He’d probably painted a much more flattering picture of me than I deserved, making me out to be some kind of hero instead of a guy who couldn’t say no to a lady in distress. I should have told him there had been nothing admirable in sitting there and watching a man slowly unravel before my eyes.

We all split up to go to our rooms to change, planning to go back out for drinks. I had considered begging off, but given that I’d skipped out on them the previous night, I figured I could at least sit through a couple rounds with them. The bar they picked wasn’t far from the hotel, so it wouldn’t be a pain for me to walk back early if I wanted to. I took a quick shower and got dressed, then went downstairs to wait for the rest of them.

In the lobby, to the left and right of the doors, there were groups of chairs and couches, tables that held lamps and vases of fresh flowers and ceramic ash trays. The seats were always half full of people with their luggage piled around their feet, either waiting to check in or waiting for their cab to take them away to their next destination. In the days before the other Easy men had arrived, sometimes I would sit there myself for a while, half my attention on a newspaper and the other half watching people come and go. Now, I headed for one of the nearest chairs where I would have a view of the elevators and could catch the rest of the men when they came down. 

But I didn’t make it to one. Before I could sit down, a man stepped into my path, stopping me in my tracks. “Excuse me,” I mumbled, looking up from his gleaming shoes to his tailored jacket to—

I was looking into the face of Lewis Nixon.

He was like a different version of himself, a cleaner and more sober twin, steadier on his feet. The stubble that had peppered his jaw the previous evening had been shaved away, and it had taken ten years away with it. He was holding his hat in his hand like a penitent, and he had the expression to match, his mouth turned down at the corners, his eyes darting toward the door like he expected to be sent away. 

It wasn’t until that moment, when relief flooded through me, that I realized how much I’d been hoping I would see him one more time. No matter how I’d tried to tell himself I was going to put him from my mind, I had been carrying around the uncomfortable feeling that I’d left something unfinished. Now here he was, and maybe we both had a second chance.

“Blanche told me where you were staying,” he said, a little sheepishly. “I wanted to come apologize to you for last night.”

“That’s not necessary,” I said. “Really.”

“No, it is.” I might have wondered if Blanche had forced him, but he did look truly sorry. Or at least embarrassed. “I was…well, anyway, I’m sorry. And I was hoping you’d let me take you out for a drink to make it up to you.”

“I don’t drink, remember?” I said. I wasn’t sure he should be drinking again either, but I didn’t want to say as much.

“I remember,” he said. Still, he raised his eyebrows hopefully, and his mouth quirked into a slight grin. “You can stick to water. It’ll be my treat.”

“Very generous of you,” I said, and I was surprised to find myself returning his smile. But even as I warmed to him—to this version of him, anyway—I wondered if there was some other reason he was there, some ulterior motive. Maybe he wanted to make sure the moment in the bedroom the previous night hadn’t made me a danger to him. I almost opened my mouth right then to tell him that wasn’t the case, but then I thought better of it. We were in the middle of a crowded lobby.

“Come on,” he said, cajoling now. “You’ve been playing tourist. Let me take you out, show you how a real New Yorker does a night on the town.”

I grimaced. “I’m not really a ‘night on the town’ kind of guy.”

“Actually…” Nix hesitated, his grip tightening on his hat until I was afraid he’d bend it permanently out of shape. “Actually, I know a place I think you’ll like. It’s quiet.”

His eyes met mine, and there was something meaningful shining in them, some kind of message I was supposed to be getting. I almost pressed him further, but the truth was, my mind was already made up. Maybe it had been made up before he even asked. I wanted to spend more time with him. If nothing else, I could see that the Lewis Nixon I had met the previous night wasn’t the real one, and I felt I owed him a chance to erase that one from my mind. 

“Alright,” I said. “Give me a minute to let my friends know I’ve made other plans.”

He nodded, looking relieved, and I turned away and went to the front desk to call up to Harry. For reasons I couldn’t quite place, I didn’t want to tell him who it was I was going out with, so I made up something about how I felt like doing a little exploring on my own. I told him to leave a message at the front desk about where he and the rest of the guys were going to be, and if I felt up to it, I’d join up with them later. He took all of this in stride and told me to have fun. I hung up feeling troubled, wishing immediately that I hadn’t lied to him, but it was too late. And anyway, it wasn’t strictly a lie. Nix hadn’t told me where we were going, so it _would be_ exploring, in a manner of speaking. 

“Ready?” Nix asked when I walked over to him again. I nodded, and he beamed, putting his hat back on his head. “Well then, let’s go.”

“What would you have done if you hadn’t stumbled across me?” I asked as we headed for the door. For all he knew, I could have been in for the rest of the night. Or I could have been out and not planning to return until late.

He didn’t look at me when he said, “I was planning to wait as long as I needed to.”

When we stepped out on the sidewalk, I expected Nix to go to the curb and hail a cab, but instead he put his fingers to my elbow and inclined his head to indicate we’d be walking. “It’s just a few blocks,” he said. “That alright?”

I told him it was, and we fell in step. It wasn’t yet dark, but it was getting there, the sky lavender where it peeked out from between the buildings. The people we passed on the sidewalk were a mixed crowd—businessmen headed home with briefcases in hand, couples walking arm in arm, groups of men and women just stepping out for the evening. Back home, I might see fewer people in whole day than I passed in a single block in New York. My head spun to think of it, all those other lives so different from my own, lives I couldn’t begin to understand. Lives like Nix’s, or Blanche’s, that played out in basement bars or opulent brownstones. 

The more Nix turned us down side streets, the fewer people we passed, and the fewer cars too. Soon we were in a darker, quieter part of town that consisted mostly of storefronts already shut up for the night. I wanted to ask where we were going then, but when I glanced over at Nix, he was frowning to himself, his lips pursed in thought, so I decided to leave him be.

Finally, he brought me up short with a hand on my arm and directed me toward a little flight of stairs that led down to an unassuming brown door. Another basement club, I thought at first, but then there was no sign, no music, nothing to mark its presence at all. There were no windows to see into, or for anyone inside to see out of. I felt a prickle of unease on the back of my neck and turned to look at Nix over my shoulder. Just as I opened my mouth to ask what we were doing, he shook his head.

“Trust me,” he said. And without waiting for my answer, he brushed past me and opened the door, then held it open for me to follow behind him. I hesitated a beat, but my curiosity got the better of me.

Inside, once the door closed behind us, it was so dark that I had to blink and squint while I waited for my eyes to adjust. When I could see again, I realized we were in what seemed to be a cross between a coatroom and a waiting area. A cluster of empty chairs and loveseats took up one half of the room, and rows of hangers hugged the opposite wall, most of them empty given the warm weather outside. In front of us was a little podium where a bored-looking man leaned on one elbow, smoking a cigarette. He had a thin, pointy face and platinum blond hair that was slicked back off his forehead.

“Hello, Peter,” Nix said.

“Mr. Nixon,” the man drawled. He jabbed his cigarette in my direction. “He with you?”

“He is for tonight.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, but when I looked at Nix, he wouldn’t meet my eyes. 

“Go on in, then,” Peter said, gesturing listlessly toward the burgundy curtain in the doorway behind him. “Not much of a crowd tonight.”

Nix brushed by me again and swept the curtain aside, then gestured for me to walk through ahead of him. I was dragged along by momentum at that point, my feet carrying me into the next room without my say-so. 

Since I hadn’t known what to expect, the sight I was met with seemed mundane at first. It was a regular-looking bar, though much more upscale than the one I had been at the previous night. The space was small and dimly lit, making it seem cozy, almost romantic. Tasteful chandeliers hung from the ceiling and candles flickered on the dark wood tables. Banquettes upholstered in deep red lined most of one wall. Couples swayed back and forth on a small dance floor to quiet music piped through invisible speakers. It wasn’t until I focused more on the couples themselves that I realized what set this particular bar apart.

Women with their arms arms around women. Men with their heads on the shoulders of other men. It was the same at the tables too, and in the far corners of the room where I didn’t dare let my eyes linger for long. My face started to heat up at once, and I turned to Nix with my mouth open in shock, wondering what on earth had possessed him. The moment in his bedroom could have been nothing. I could have taken one look at that place and stormed out, called the cops. It was reckless, stupid. I meant to tell him so, but the words stuck in my throat.

“Dick?” he asked. He was trying to sound unconcerned, but I could see the worry in his eyes.

“I didn’t know,” I blurted. The urge to scold him faded away as quickly as it had come, and I was left with only disbelief.

Nix’s eyes widened. “Hmm?”

“I mean that…” I took a step closer to him. “I didn’t know that there were places like this.”

His mouth tilted into a smug grin that did little to hide the relief that had flashed across his face, and he went to sidestep me, clapping me on the shoulder as he passed. “You get us a table. I’ll get drinks.”

“Water,” I reminded him. He shot me a wink over his shoulder.

I chose a table near the wall, away from the dance floor. It seemed voyeuristic to look around too much, so I stared at my hands on top of the tablecloth, picking at one of my cuticles and wondering if it was a good idea to stay there with him. I didn’t know if he’d gotten the wrong idea and had brought me there with some ill-conceived plan to romance me. The thought made my shoulders tense, made me glance toward the door with half a mind to dash out of it. But before I could decide one way or the other, Nix was back, clutching two glasses in one palm, water for me and whiskey for him. 

“You don’t have to hide back here you know,” he said as he sat down—next to me rather than across the table. His sleeve brushed mine as he settled, and I got a whiff of his aftershave, spicy and masculine and slightly mentholated. There was no alcohol on his breath. Not yet. 

“I’m not hiding,” I said, and reached for the water glass, pulling it close to me and wrapping both hands around it. 

“It takes some getting used to, I know.” Nix took a small sip of his whiskey, then looked sideways at me. “I wasn’t wrong about you, then. You had me worried for a second.”

I tapped a couple fingers against the table, feeling jittery, restless. “You shouldn’t have assumed. This could have been dangerous, bringing me here.”

He shrugged, like it didn’t matter one way or the other, then gestured around us. “So what do you think?”

I wasn’t sure yet what I thought. Every time my eyes happened to land on a couple on the dance floor, I glanced away quickly, reflexive fear squeezing my heart. It all seemed so brazen, even though I could tell by then that the place had to be a carefully guarded secret. I guessed that the man at the door, Peter, was there to make sure the wrong people didn’t get in, and when I asked Nix, he confirmed it.

“He’ll only let you in if he recognizes you,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s a private club, sorry, no admittance.”

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked.

“I’ll wager they don’t have places like this in the sticks.”

They didn’t, as far as I knew—although Lancaster had hardly felt like back-country to me until I came to New York. But even if there had been places like this back home, I wasn’t the kind of person who would have found out about them. Despite my restlessness, I figured that when the time came, I’d settle down with a woman like I was meant to. It hadn’t occurred to me that things could play out any other way, and I didn’t think that knowing a there were bars like this was going to change my mind. Nix bringing me there felt almost like a challenge, like he was daring me to take issue with all of it. 

I never did respond well to dares.

“Well,” I said, sitting up a little straighter, “aren’t you going to ask me to dance?”

I felt a flicker of satisfaction at the shock that crossed his face; Nix didn’t seem like a person who was easily shocked. He stared hard at me for a beat, clearly waiting for me to take it back, but I didn’t budge just raised my eyebrows at him and waited. He shook his head in disbelief, tossed back the contents of his glass, and then got to his feet a little too fast, his chair tottering onto two legs before he put a hand out to right it.

“Come on then, Red.”

My heart was beating so hard I thought for sure he’d hear it and laugh at me, but as I stood, he just smiled and slid his hand into mine to tug me along. We weaved our way through the tables, then edged ourselves into the cluster of bodies swaying on the dance floor. When he pulled me around to face him, I faltered, my breath caught in my lungs, my hands hovering in midair. But he stepped closer and put a hand on my shoulder and curled the other around mine.

“I’ll even let you lead,” he said conspiratorially. “Try not to step on my feet.”

My hand found his waist without me consciously putting it there, and soon we were moving together. I really did have to concentrate to keep from stepping on him. It had been a long time since I’d danced with anyone at all, and it took a little while to come back to me, especially with my heart racing and my thoughts clouded by the closeness of him, the fact that other people could _see us_. My palm was sweating where it was pressed against his, and I could feel moisture prickling in the small of my back too, making me wish I’d shed my jacket back at the table.

“I think you’re blushing, Dick,” he said, grinning.

“I’m sure you’re imagining things,” I said, even as my face grew hotter. I’d been keeping my eyes fixed somewhere past his ear, but I looked at him then, and when our eyes met, he grinned wider, looking truly pleased for the first time since I’d first laid eyes on him. 

“You’re a good sport, aren’t you?”

“Do you want to goad me all night?” I asked. “Or do you want to dance?” I slid my hand around to the small of his back and pulled him closer, and that shut him up pretty quick. He swallowed hard before he curled his arm around the back of my neck and leaned in, until our cheeks were barely brushing. We went through three songs like that, turning slow circles, his breath humid against my ear and his thumb dipping into the collar of my shirt. Heat spread through me from every point where our bodies touched—hands, chests, thighs—until I felt like he was branding me, like I might come out of it with my skin pink and raw as evidence. I tried not to wonder whether he did this often, brought strangers here and danced with them, pretending he was carefree. I tried not to wonder whether this was the kind of thing he’d want to do again with me.

At the end of the third song, Nix let out a quiet breath and pulled away from me, a fake grin pasted on his face. He didn’t seem to want to quite meet my eyes. “I need another drink,” he said. “You want anything?”

I shook my head. My water was still back at the table—the table I wasn’t sure I wanted to return to. But before I could say anything else, he was letting go of me completely and turning to work his way through the crowd to the bar.

We didn’t dance anymore that night. Back at the table, we sat with a few safe inches between us, and our conversation stayed shallow and mundane. I managed to extract a few more details about his time in the Army from him, but nothing too personal. He had been an intelligence officer. He rose to the rank of Captain. I made an offhand remark about how bad Sobel had been, and Nix got a funny little smile on his face and told me a story about a lieutenant in his company who almost led his men into the middle of a bunch of German tanks and then tried to blame it on the platoon leaders. “Give the wrong men power,” Nix said, shaking his head. We smiled at each other then, and I got that feeling again—like we were old friends sharing in a long-running joke. I had to duck my head and look down at the table, until the moment passed.

After he’d drained his second whiskey, he didn’t get another, but I could tell it was a struggle for him. He kept picking up his empty glass and putting it back down, drummed his fingers on the side of it, gazing down into it like he could refill it with sheer force of will. He never fully relaxed. There was tension in his shoulders, and his eyes scanned the room often, as if checking for threats. But even as uneasy as he seemed, I found myself enjoying his company. I liked how, after lighting a cigarette, he’d blow the smoke out of the corner of his mouth, away from my face. I liked how he had a way of teasing that seemed more friendly than mean-spirited. I liked how every time he smiled, it was with a certain measure of endearing sheepishness, like he wasn’t used to showing any happiness around people.

It was with some reluctance that I eventually told him I should be heading back to the hotel. I’d already stayed longer than I meant to and it was too late for me to meet up with the Easy men afterward, but it had been worth it. The uncomfortable feeling that had been at the back of my mind all day had dissipated. I believed that the previous night had been Nix at his worst, and if he was also capable of having nights like the one we’d just shared, there was hope for him yet. I wouldn’t have to worry.

He insisted on walking me back, which I was glad for since I wasn’t sure I could remember the way on my own. The street was quiet and deserted when we emerged from the club, a sharp contrast to my experience on Fifty-Second Street a couple nights back. I was just starting to learn that not every part of the city was rich with nightlife. It was no surprise that the club had chosen the location it did, where traffic was low and people were unlikely to stumble upon it. We walked for several blocks before we saw another soul, and several more before the city started to roar to life around us again. 

“Well,” Nix said as we approached the hotel. “I hope tonight wasn’t quite so miserable for you.”

“Not at all,” I said, and I shoved both hands in my pockets to stifle the urge to brush my fingers against his in reassurance. We both stopped on the sidewalk next to the revolving doors, swaying slightly on the pavement with our eyes down-turned. 

“How, uh, long did you say you were in New York for?” Nix asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “My friends are leaving Saturday, but I think I’m planning to stay a while longer.” Even as we stood there, I started to consider staying through the fall, maybe seeing what Christmastime in the city was like. I had a nest egg saved up, so I could get out of the hotel if I wanted, rent a room somewhere. I perhaps should have been worried that I’d get bored or feel guilty for not becoming a productive member of society, but the most pressing concern in my mind was that I couldn’t imagine going back to Lancaster and I didn’t know where else in the world to go. 

“Hmm,” Nix said. I looked up at his face against and saw that he was studying me, his eyes combing my face like he was looking for the answer to a question he hadn’t asked yet. He must have found no answer forthcoming, because he took a breath and said, “Maybe we could do this again. If you’re not too busy with other things.”

I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling or blurting out my answer too fast. By then, I had completely forgotten how uneasy that club made me feel when we first walked into it—or for that matter, how uneasy Nix made me feel when we met. All I knew was that he looked so tentatively hopeful, his brow furrowed and his eyes shining in the moonlight. I wanted him to smile again. I wanted to see him smile a whole lot more.

“I’m not too busy,” I said at last.

I saw his shoulders heave as he let out a silent breath. “What are your plans for tomorrow night?”

“I can get away.” I’d still have all day with the men, I reasoned. And if it gave Nix a reason to shower and dress and get out of the house again, then it felt important that I say yes. 

He smiled then, and it made me smile in turn. “Great,” he said. “That’s great. I’ll meet you here at around seven o’clock?”

“That sounds fine,” I said evenly.

He put out his hand, and I slid mine into it, trying to ignore how awkward a handshake felt when I’d already held him in my arms and felt his breath on my cheek. That hadn’t meant anything though. I’d practically dared him to dance with me. And anyway, that wasn’t what this was about. He needed a friend, and I wasn’t exactly in the market for more than that myself. 

“Tomorrow then,” he said as his hand fell back to his side.

“Tomorrow,” I echoed.

After one last smile, he turned to walk away, and I stared after him, watching him pass in and out of the light of the streetlamps until he was out of sight.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder, it'll be two weeks again before the next chapter, as I'm going to be out of town next weekend! Sorry for the delay. :)

I had been overconfident in telling Nix I was sure I could get away the next night. I’d thought I could come up with a good lie, and I thought the men wouldn’t miss me, but I’d been wrong on both counts. 

“What?” Harry said, too loudly, when I tried to make my excuses. “Come on, Dick. What’s so important that you have to ditch us again?”

We were walking back to the hotel after another day of sightseeing. Harry and I were at the back of the pack, but when he started scolding me the others looked over their shoulders at us in interest. I was suddenly keenly aware of how little privacy there was when vacationing with a group, less even than when you were fighting a war with them. Then, there had been separation. Someone else made the decisions, or I did, and everyone else followed them. I had never taken much pleasure in ordering anyone around, but that kind of structure had been easier to navigate than the one I currently faced, where everyone felt they had a say in what I did with my evening.

“You seeing a girl or something, Major?” George asked.

Joe smacked him on the back of the head. “Not everything is about girls, Luz.”

My stomach flipped at the implication, and I realized then that I couldn’t lie to them anymore. If they found out later that I was really sneaking off to see Nix, it would look a whole lot more suspicious. 

“Actually, last night I ran into that…the waitress’s brother. The one I went to meet two nights ago.” I had to clasp my hands together to resist the urge to tug at my color. “He seemed to be doing much better, and he wanted to go out again tonight and I thought…well, I didn’t want to say no.”

“Why didn’t you just say so?” Harry laughed, clapping me on the shoulder. “That’s great! The calming presence of Dick Winters must have worked its magic on him after all.”

I scoffed. “I don’t—”

“You should have him come out with us!” George suggested, and before I could do much to protest, I was getting drowned out by a chorus of agreement from the rest of them. They all believed that if Nix had done well with just me, he’d do much better with a whole group. I didn’t see the logic there, thought it might overwhelm him rather than cheer him, but it was too late. The matter had already been decided. Nix was going to meet the whole gang whether he liked it or not.

So when I headed downstairs at seven o’clock sharp, it was with all of them in tow. I was wound tight with anxiety, afraid this would undo whatever little bit of good had come out of the previous night, but I tried not to let it show. Already I was worried the other guys would see us together and somehow know everything. Where we’d been the previous night, and what we’d done there. The moment in Nix’s bedroom the night before. Even our goodbye in front of the hotel took on a gleam of romance that I swore hadn’t been there at the time. It was silly, thinking they would all somehow figure it out—silly to think there _was_ anything to figure out—but the shame was there all the same, simmering low in my gut, ready to bubble over if I caught so much as an odd look from them.

Nix had been punctual that night. He was already sitting there waiting in one over the overstuffed chairs near the doors, and as soon as he saw me, he got to his feet. The corner of his mouth had already started to curve into a grin when he noticed I wasn’t alone. I was watching him closely enough to see the flicker of panic the crossed his face, even though it was subtle and gone in an instant, replaced by a mask of friendly curiosity. An act. A _very good_ act. I would have been impressed if I wasn’t so alarmed that he could switch on the fake charm that quick.

“Uh, guys,” I said, recovering enough to gesture at Nix. “This is Lewis Nixon.”

I felt Harry glance my way, and I could imagine the expression on his face— _Dick, this guy looks downright normal to me_ —but I refused to acknowledge him. I was too busy watching Nix, and I kept watching him while each of the men stepped forward to introduce themselves and shake his hand. He was still smiling that amicable smile, but I thought if I looked close enough I could see the places where it was too rigid and the whole facade was ready to tumble down.

When introductions were finished, I stepped to his side and touched his elbow, and I felt a slight tremor go through him, like he was making an effort not to jerk away. “They wanted me to invite you out with us tonight,” I told him. “What do you think?”

“We don’t bite. Not much,” Harry said. He was beaming at Nix, and it made him look so harmless I wondered how anyone could be anything but endeared. 

“Well, I…” Nix glanced at me, and I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or close to agreement. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“You wouldn’t be imposing,” Carwood said. “You could tell us where the good bars are around here. The places the locals go.”

Maybe ‘bars’ had been the magic word, or maybe Nix’s initial shock was starting to subside, or maybe he just realized that they weren’t going to take no for an answer. Whatever the case, his next smile looked less stiff to me. He met and held my eyes for a beat, then nodded. “Alright. If you’re sure.”

I felt relieved as we made our way out onto the street. A lot could still go wrong, but since one obstacle had been crossed without a hitch, I was feeling optimistic. 

Nix led us a few blocks away to a dark, cozy bar that ended up being a great hit with the men. It wasn’t a flashy place, but we had no trouble finding tables, and we could hear each other talk, and they poured the drinks strong—so they told me. We crowded into a circular booth in one corner, and I found myself pressed up against Nix from shoulder to hip to knee, trying to ignore the way my heart was hammering against my ribcage. No one was going to notice our closeness since we were all packed in there—Ron had his arm resting on the booth behind Carwood’s shoulders, and George kept elbowing Joe and Babe in the ribs accidentally—but I was still all too aware of our closeness and of every minute shift of Nix’s body against mine. 

“So, Nixon,” Harry said once we were all settled with our drinks. I tensed up, preparing for him to ask some question about the war and make things bad for all of us, but luckily he had more tact than that. Unluckily for me, he only had a _little_ more tact. “We heard you managed to get Dick to have a little fun last night. What’s your secret?”

“Hey, I’ve been having fun this whole time,” I said, feigning indignation in hopes that it would take some of the heat off Nix. But to my surprise, when I glanced over at him, he was grinning wide with amusement.

“Oh, he wasn’t such a bore. Although I can’t believe you all went through a whole war together and you never managed to get this guy to take a single drink,” he said, then turned his grin on me. “You must be made of strong stuff, Dick.”

“I think I saw him have a sip or two on V-E Day,” Ron said. 

Nix whistled low, and somehow even that seemed brazen. “Oh, well. A sip or two. That changes everything.”

“I like this guy, Dick,” Harry said, gesturing magnanimously with his glass. “You can keep him. I think he’ll fit right in.”

And strangely enough, he did fit right in. None of the worst case scenarios I had conjured in my head ended up coming to pass, and the rest of the night went just about as well as it could possibly have gone. Nix got on particularly well with Harry, whose brand of good-natured sarcasm meshed well with Nix’s more cynical variety, and with Ron, who drew him into a long and overly detailed conversation about whether bourbon or scotch was the superior liquor and which varieties were good and which were swill. 

“It all tastes like shit to me,” Joe said after listening to them go back and forth a while. “Give me a good beer over any of that.”

“It takes a lot of beer to get a man drunk,” Nix said, but a moment after the words left his mouth, I felt him go tense at my side and I could tell he feared he’d said too much. Fortunately, Joe didn’t seem to notice.

“But I’d rather get drink a lot of beer than a little whiskey.”

Nix pressed his leg tighter against mine under the table, but the smirk he sent Joe’s way was smooth as silk. “Suit yourself. More for me.”

As I watched him warm to the Easy men that night, it was hard to imagine that he could ever be that abrasive version of himself ever again. I started to wonder if the other night had been a fluke, a particularly rough patch in an otherwise less-rough life. It was all going sort of dim in my mind, like a dream I couldn’t quite remember the details of. That dark house could have been playing with my senses, tricking me into thinking things were worse than they really were. It could have been that I wasn’t used to being around heavy drinkers. Blanche had been upset, sure, but even she had hinted that it wasn’t always that bad. Just made it hard to keep friends around. Well, maybe Nix just hadn’t found the right group of friends. 

Around ten o’clock, Nix glanced at his watch and at his empty glass and then made his apologies, telling us he had to get back before his sister got home so she wouldn’t worry. I recognized it for the fake excuse that it was and offered to walk him out, since I was about ready to head back to the hotel myself. The men called fond goodbyes and well-wishes to Nix, and Harry got up to shake his hand, and then Nix and I walked out together.

Out on the sidewalk, he gestured in the direction of the hotel in silent indication that he’d walk with me a while, then went into his pocket and came out with a cigarette. I watched him cup his hand to his face and light it, watched a cloud of smoke escape from his lips. It was hard to point my eyes straight ahead again.

“They seem like good men,” Nix said after a little while. 

“They are,” I agreed. “I think they liked you.”

I saw him shrug out of the corner of my eye. “It’s not hard to be the kind of man people like, at least for a while.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked, looking sideway at him and raising an eyebrow. That sounded mostly like bravado to me. I didn’t buy it. “Then why doesn’t everyone do it?”

“Most don’t have a reason to. Or they don’t care.”

I didn’t have to ask why he thought he had to put on a show for people. Between the drinking and whatever demons had followed him back from overseas, I could see why he thought he had something to hide. But I also thought he was wrong. “For what it’s worth, I think you’d be surprised how many people would like you even if you weren’t pretending.”

He laughed at that, a dark little chuckle that got cut short when he put the cigarette back between his lips for another drag. “You saw me when I wasn’t doing much pretending. How did you like me then?”

“I liked you then,” I said. “I could tell you were all bark and no bite.”

I was oversimplifying a little. I don’t know if I would have admitted to liking him that first night I met him, but when I looked back on it in the context of what I’d seen of him since, it seemed fitting. He’d tried to scare me off the first night by being caustic, tried to scare me off the second by being shocking. And he’d failed. I wasn’t scared. I was just ready to get to the part where he wasn’t fighting me anymore and we could really become friends.

I hadn’t realized Nix had fallen silent until he piped up again, flicking a shower of glowing ash to the ground. “You know, Dick, I can’t tell if you’re a really good guy or a really dumb one.”

That surprised a laugh out of me. “Let me know if you figure it out.”

We made it all the way back to the hotel before Nix bothered to signal for a cab. As it pulled up to the curb, he turned back to me, an uncertain expression on his face. I decided to save him the trouble of asking.

“The guys are leaving in just a few more days now, so I doubt they’ll let me get away again. But if you want to come out with us…”

He flapped his hand at me and shook his head. “No, no. You enjoy time with your men. You’re staying on after they leave, right?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Well, how about you give me a call then?”

“Sure.” 

I wondered, briefly, how it had become a foregone conclusion that we were going to see each other again and keep seeing each other. It’s funny how it happened that way. Funny and strange. One day I didn’t know him at all, and a few days later everything took on this sheen of inevitability. Our lives brushed up against each other and got stuck that way, like a burr sticks on the leg of a cow walking through a field. 

The next few days made me restless. As much as I enjoyed my time with the men, a full week started to seem like a little too long, even when there was plenty to do. Carwood, with backup from Ron, successfully campaigned for two more museum visits. We took the boat out to Ellis Island one afternoon, which was nice. We saw an off-Broadway show the next night, which was even nicer. I had never been to the theater before, and it was like magic to me, like being transported into another world for a few hours. Still, the nights in smoke-filled bars started to blur together, and every night when I laid my head on the pillow, I felt a little more tired. 

Harry pulled me aside the night before they all planned to leave. We were all at the hotel bar, me nursing a glass of ice water while the rest of them knocked back their spirits. I had been waiting for Harry’s fraternal lecture, had spent all night anticipating it, so when he gripped my shoulder, his gaze earnest and glassy with drink, I smiled at him, prepared to take it with as much grace as I could muster.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked.

That wasn’t exactly the opener I’d been expecting, and I frowned, waiting for him to explain.

“Don’t make that face at me, Dick,” he scolded. “You think I haven’t noticed that something’s off with you? I thought you’d be all settled now. Married to some buxom blonde and popping out little freckled babies. But here you are.”

That was better, I thought. That was the part I’d been anticipating, the treatise on how I should be living my life. He was as bad as my mother. “We can’t all be as lucky as you,” I said. I wasn’t being petulant. I didn’t feel jealous of Harry’s life. Maybe I was a little jealous of how settled he was, how confident he was the he was where he wanted to be, but I wasn’t begrudging him his happiness or his desire for me to be similarly happy. I knew he had the best intentions, even if they were somewhat misplaced.

His head bobbed back and forth like he was unwilling to concede my point. “Maybe I got lucky meeting Kitty, but a big part of luck is being in the right place at the right time. Are you in the right place?”

I felt like I was. Or at least as close to the right place as I could be for the time being. My thoughts turned to Nix, to that club, to that dance floor. 

“You don’t have to worry about me, Harry.”

He studied me for a while, scratching his chin with one finger. “You think you’ll be spending more time with that Nixon fellow?”

I was prepared for that question too, which was the only thing that kept me from reacting. The guys hadn’t mentioned Nix much since the night he spent with us, except to tell me, in so many words, that he had been good company. Harry, though—I could tell Harry had something he wanted to say about it, something he’d maybe wanted to say since that first night, when I told him about Blanche’s proposition. I’d been waiting for him to finally get it off his chest.

“I probably will, yeah,” I said. “Why?”

“I just think you should be careful is all.” He spoke slowly, like he was afraid of angering me. And in fairness to him, I did feel an unexpected prickle of annoyance. 

“Careful how?”

He looked down into his beer and fell silent long enough that I thought he might drop it. But he didn’t. “Kitty’s sister works at the VA hospital, so she hears things. Bad things, Dick. Not everyone who came back from over there has had an easy time adjusting, and some of them…it doesn’t go so well for some of them. Or for the people around them. Nixon wasn’t in great shape the night you met him, right?”

“Well, sure, but you saw—”

“I saw him drink three whiskeys in the time it took Ron to drink one.”

My fingers tightened around my glass. “I wouldn’t say drinking a little too much is out of the ordinary for someone in his circumstances.”

“And when did you become the expert on alcohol consumption? Listen, all I mean is that if you want to help, you’d do better to convince him to see a doctor or an analyst. Better safe than sorry, right? I’m sure you don’t want to see anything bad happen to him.”

Privately, I thought Kitty’s sister had been telling Kitty too many salacious horror stories. I thought Harry was being ridiculous for suggesting that someone who was having difficulty shaking off the combat fatigue was going to be a danger to anyone. And I thought I’d had just about enough of that conversation.

“Thanks for the advice, Harry,” I said. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

If he noticed any insincerity on my part, he didn’t show it. His face split into a relieved grin, and he gave my shoulder a companionable pat. “Good. That’s good. I’m just looking out for you.”

I knew he was, and I felt a little guilty for disagreeing with him, but his certainty that Nix was someone I should stay away from had only succeeded in making me all the more eager to see him again. Not because I was being rebellious—I just was sure Harry was worrying for nothing. Nix didn’t need a doctor. Nix wasn’t a dangerous man. I appreciated Harry’s concern, but it was unnecessary.

Despite my weariness, I was sad to see the men go. I went with them to the train station the next morning and stayed, doling out warm handshakes and back pats to each of them in turn, until only Gene and I were left. He had the longest trip, all the way back to Louisiana, and was going to be on the train through the night. Going home. All of them had homes to go to, and there I was, still looking for mine. 

When his train rolled in, I helped him carry his bags over and then, to my surprise, he pulled me into a hug. I curled my fingers into his jacket, and when we broke apart, he was looking at me in that way of his, his eyes narrowed, quietly analyzing.

“Come visit sometime,” he said. 

_You don’t have to worry about me,_ I wanted to tell him, just like I’d told Harry. Instead, I nodded and told him I would. Someday. 

I stood there on the platform with my hands in my pockets and watched until the train had chugged out of the station, waiting to feel something. Loneliness. Relief. Frustration. Anything at all. But it was like my head was full of cotton, my emotions dampened. I left the station feeling more directionless than ever.

I had planned to take the rest of the evening to myself, but as soon as I got back to the hotel, I changed my mind. Instead I headed for the telephones next to the front desk and dialed Nix’s number. He answered almost instantly, as if he’d been waiting by the phone.

“Hello?”

I wasn’t expecting his voice to sound so thick and sticky, like it had that first night we met, and the sound of it made my chest tight. “Nix,” I said, trying to tamp down my concern. “How are you?”

“Oh. Dick.” I could hear his relief. “I’m fine. Just fine. Did your boys get off okay?”

“They did.”

“That’s good.” There was a pause, and I didn’t know what to do except wait for him to go on. “Well, I guess you’ll be wanting to take it easy tonight—”

“No,” I said. “I was hoping…” I wasn’t sure what I was hoping. All I knew was that I wanted to see him, but it didn’t seem like a thing I should say out loud.

Luckily I didn’t need to say it. “I can be there in an hour,” Nix said, and this time I hardly noticed how his words were slurred together. In those few seconds, my worry had evaporated. “Or we could meet at the club.”

And there was the emotion I had been looking for, the flutter in my chest, the tingle in my spine. It was a relief to feel it. I realized it was what I had been looking for when I called him.

“I’ll meet you there,” I said, because I didn’t like the idea of sitting and waiting for him for an hour.

He breathed heavily down the line—maybe a sigh, maybe a laugh. “Good,” he said. “I’ll see you.”

Just as the line went dead, I realized I was smiling.

I went up to my room for a minute, changed my shirt, then headed out into the twilight. The streetlights were starting to come on, and there was a chill in the air that made me wonder if I should have grabbed my coat. Any day, the late summer heat was going to break and plunge us into brisk fall. I found myself thinking, as I walked, about the trees in Central Park and whether or not they would change colors before they shed their leaves. I didn’t let myself examine whether it was inertia or something else that made it so easy for me to think about staying in New York that long, like the matter was settled.

When I made it to the club, I didn’t go inside. I thought the doorman would have let me in, but I wanted to wait for Nix just in case. I leaned up against the brick and looked up and down the street, scanning the faces of the few people who went by, anticipating that each one of them would be him. I imagined he would smile at me when he saw me. Somehow his smile had become etched into my brain, and I enjoyed picturing it and picturing him wearing it more often. A smile suited him better than a frown, I thought.

At least half an hour passed before a cab pulled up a little way down the street and spit out a man, and I could tell from the slouchy way that he walked that it was him. Smoke curled from one of his hands, silvery in the streetlights, and when he brought that hand to his mouth, the end of the cigarette glowed orange. It shouldn’t have been such a pretty picture, a man walking and smoking. I waited until he had dropped the butt on the ground, then pushed myself off the wall and took a few steps to meet him, a greeting on the tip of my tongue. 

Before I could say anything, I got a good look at him, and the words died in my throat.

He was in a bad way again. I knew it instantly. It looked like he hadn’t bothered to shave for the past few days, and even in the semi-dark I could see the dullness in his eyes, the telltale slackness in his features. He had foregone a tie, and my fingers itched to reach out and button the top button of his shirt, to hide those clammy few inches of skin from the world and from myself. In an instant, the night was already starting to unravel around me—around us.

“You haven’t been waiting long, have you?” he asked, and I noticed with growing unease that he sounded even more drunk than he had on the phone. 

“No, not long,” I said. He swayed a little, and I reached for his shoulder out of reflex, gripping his jacket as if to hold him upright. “Nix…”

“I’m fine.” He shrugged me off, too roughly. Whatever relief I’d heard in his voice earlier was gone. Now, it seemed like he didn’t want to see me at all. I was about to suggest we call it off, come back another night when he was feeling better, but he shoved past me and made for the stairs. “Let’s go in.”

I didn’t want to make a scene there on the sidewalk, so I followed him as he lumbered his way down the steps and into the club. He walked ahead of me all the way through the curtain and into the inner room, and he hardly turned to look at me before mumbling that he would get us drinks. I was given no opportunity to argue. All I could do was go find us a table, sit, and wait, my fingers drumming on my thighs and tangling together under the table.

When he came back with two whiskeys, a dark sense of foreboding slid down my spine and settled heavy and uncomfortable in my gut. He thunked one glass down in front of me hard enough to slosh some of it on the table, then fell into the chair next to me, loose-limbed and grinning like he was proud of himself. 

“What’s this?” I asked, pointing at the glass in front of me. Just looking at it, the liquid inside glowing like amber in the low light, made me feel sick.

“Come on, Dick,” he said, leaning close to me so I could smell the liquor on his breath. “It’s not polite to make a man drink alone.”

I shook my head and pushed the glass away. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing’s gotten into me.”

“Are you…” I thought back to him standing by the curb, telling me to go ahead and spend the last few days with my men. “Are you angry with me?”

He laughed at that. “Now, why would I be angry, Dick? How could anyone ever be angry with you?”

He started to lift his drink to his mouth, but I caught his wrist and pulled it back down to the table and anchored it there. “Why don’t we dance, Nix? What do you say?”

His brow furrowed as if in confusion. He struggled weakly against my grip, but I held on tighter, determined to snap him out of this and quick. I thought if I could ground him in the current moment, he’d forget about the rest of it, whether he’d spend the past three days drinking or not, whether he’d got some foolish self-destructive notions into his head or not. 

“You don’t really want to dance with me,” he mumbled. A strand of hair fell down across his forehead, and he shoved it back into place with his free hand, his fingers shaking.

“I do,” I said, willing him to believe it. “I want to, Lewis.”

His eyes widened, and he swallowed hard, shaking his head. I could tell then that I’d lost, even before his face hardened a moment later, before he jerked his arm out of my grasp and drained his glass in two long swallows, then grabbed the one he put in front of me and slid it toward himself. I thought about Harry’s warnings and felt ashamed of myself. I’d been silly to think that two good nights meant Nix had turned a corner, like I knew him well enough to even make that judgment. 

“I’m going to get myself some water,” I said. I needed to escape, clear my head, if only for a moment. I didn’t wait for him to say anything before standing up and walking to the bar.

I sat down heavily on a barstool while I waited for the bartender to finish serving the people ahead of me. The club was full that night—much fuller than the last time. I had a fleeting thought of dancing with someone else instead; there were men scattered around the room who looked like they could be alone, including a tall, dark-haired fellow leaning against the bar not too far away from me with his eyes trained longingly on the dance floor. He sensed my eyes on him, and our gazes collided for an instant—but just as he started to smile, I looked away again, my heart in my throat. That wasn’t what I wanted. 

Nix was under my skin—there was no two ways about it. Even that night, drunk and vexing as he was, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Lewis Nixon that was underneath, the one I could get to if I could just scrape off all the grime. The one who’d charmed my friends. The one his sister adored. The one who had scuffed his feet on the pavement outside The Roosevelt and asked me shyly if I’d want to see him again. I’d spent more of the past few days thinking about him than I wanted to admit, but it was all staring me in the face there at that bar. I could have walked out and left him, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay.

I had just enough time for that realization to fill me up before everything went pear-shaped. That’s what being with Nix was like: the woods outside Bastogne, the long stretches of quiet when we’d been sure it’d be over soon, but then the trees would be splintering around us and men would be diving for foxholes and the snow would turn scarlet. 

I hadn’t yet gotten the bartender’s attention when I felt a hand on my elbow, and I looked over my shoulder to see him standing there, looking so petrified I felt my own heart beat harder in my chest in sympathy. He was pale as a sheet and gripping me tight enough to bruise. His eyes were trained on the door, where three men had just walked in and were looking around for a place to sit. Three harmless-looking men, but they’d tripped something in Nix.

“We need to go,” he hissed in my ear.

Confused, I laid my hand over his, meaning to pry his fingers away and ask what was wrong, but he tugged insistently, jerking me off the stool and then using the momentum to spin me another quarter-turn toward the back of the bar. In the face of his agitation, I couldn’t argue with him, and he didn’t give me much time anyway. His hand slipped into mine and then he was dragging me along with surprising determination.

“Lew,” I said, but before I could get anything else out, we came to a side door, which he wrenched open and pulled me through, spilling us out into a dark, narrow alley. A tabby cat hissed at us and darted behind a group of trash cans. As the door swung closed behind us, the music of the club faded away to nothing. There was no handle on this side, I noticed. No way to get back in except to go back up to the front. Nix still hadn’t let go of my hand. He was squeezing it even tighter now, so the bones ground together.

“Come on,” he said, pulling me along, headed for the mouth of the alley. “We have to—”

“Nix,” I said, finally finding the presence of mind to dig in my heels and slow him down, if not stop him. He was scaring me now. He had a wild look, like he was no longer seeing the real world around us. “Nix, what’s the matter?”

He ignored me, but I planted my feet and wouldn’t budge, and he seemed loathe to let go of my hand. 

“Dick,” he said. “Please.”

I shook my head, swallowing down my alarm so I could try to figure out what was wrong. “Did you see someone you knew?”

Did it even matter? In a place like that, wouldn’t they both be equally incriminated for being there? But I couldn’t think of any other reason why he would be so agitated all of a sudden.

A growl of frustration ripped its way out of his mouth, and before I had time to react, he jerked me close to him and then spun me into the wall. My back hit the bricks hard, jarringly so, but I was distracted from any pain when Nix moved in close, pressing us together from chest to thighs so we were both shrouded in the shadow of the building. One of his hands pressed into the wall by my head and the other twisted in my lapel. His breath was coming hard and fast.

“I should never have brought you here,” he said, his voice full of remorse. “I should have left you out of it.”

“Left me out of what?” I was ashamed at the panic that bloomed in my chest. Whatever it was, whatever he was afraid of, I didn’t want to run from it. I didn’t need his protection. I reached out and curled my hand around the side of his neck, under his jaw, feeling his pulse thrum beneath his skin. “Lewis.”

He made a sound like a sob just before he pressed his mouth to mine. I felt it in stages—the astringent hint of whiskey on his lips, his hot breath on my cheek, a scorching flicker of tongue. He kissed like he was trying to start a fight, but I didn’t want to fight him. I could feel is heart pounding where our chests were pressed together, and how fast and heavy he was breathing. My hand slid up to the side of his face where it caressed his cheek in an attempt to gentle him, to comfort him, and I wrapped my other arm around his waist, pulling his shaking body into mine. 

“Dick,” he said when we had to come up for air, but I didn’t let him get any more words out before I pulled him in again. He had to know. I had to let him know that it wasn’t just him, alone in this.

“Shh.” I kissed him again and again, until his mouth went pliant under mine and he sagged against me. “Shh, it’s alright.”

It was the mewl of that cat that broke us apart in the end, that reminder that the world still existed out there. No one had seen us, but someone could have. Nix took half a step back and smoothed out his clothes in a series of jerky, awkward movements, looking everywhere but at me. I had to grab his hands and still them to get him to meet my eyes.

“Who did you see?” I asked him.

He took a deep breath and let it out in a shaky sigh, then pulled his hands out of my grasp. “Some men who were in my company.”

I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, his voice ragged. “Please don’t ask me, alright?”

I could tell that even the thought was making him start to panic again, and I didn’t want that, but I had to know if he was in danger. If _we_ were in danger. _I should have left you out of it_ , he’d said, as if I was in some kind of trouble now. 

“Tell me you’re going to be alright and I’ll drop it,” I said.

He blinked at me, like he couldn’t process what I’d said. “What?”

“Are you in any danger?” 

Slowly, with a forlorn expression on his face, he shook his head. It didn’t mean no. It meant he wasn’t sure. That wasn’t a good enough answer for me, but as much as I wanted to press him further, I couldn’t bring myself to cause him any more distress. He would tell me if it was that bad, I reasoned. He would tell me if there was something I needed to know. Sighing, I took him by the shoulders and pulled him close to me again, heedless once more of how exposed we were. 

“You don’t have to—” he started, but I didn’t let him finish.

“I want to,” I said, and gripped his chin to draw his mouth to mine again. The whiskey on his breath was starting to taste sweet to me. Or maybe it was the way he sighed into my mouth that was sweet. Maybe it was his hands on my chest, blunt nails rasping against the fabric of my shirt. He was still trembling, but the more I kissed him, the more that felt sweet too.


	5. Chapter 5

The nightmares found me that night and plagued me every night for the next few days. They weren’t violent dreams—no sounds of explosions in the distance, no shooting Germans in the back. Rather, I would find myself wandering down the road outside Eindhoven or through the snowy Belgian woods or through the empty streets of Foy or Hagenau, in the middle of the day with a bright sun shining overhead. I was alone, the men nowhere to be found. I wandered for hours, or sometimes what felt like days, trying to find them, certain that wherever they were they were in trouble and needed me. When I woke, my throat would be tight and my eyes wet, my heart pounding with fear. I would look around my room and see that I was alone, and I’d go to the window and look down at the traffic to be sure there were still people in the world, they hadn’t all evaporated while I was sleeping and left me behind.

I didn’t talk to Nix for three days. After what had happened in that alley, he had walked me back to the hotel, his head hung low with embarrassment, silent the whole way. I’d tried to say something to him before we parted, to let him know everything was alright, but he would hardly look at me and waved off all my attempts to speak. His goodbye was little more than a grunt, and then he’d disappeared off into the dark.

Twice a day I called him, once in the morning and once at night, but no one answered. On the third day, I considered going by his house, but I imagined him opening the door and barking at me to go away and thought better of it. I was worried about him, especially since he’d been so agitated the last time I’d seen him, but there was nothing I could do if he was determined to shut me out. There was a chance, I thought, that the kiss had put him off. If that was the case, it was only fair of me to let him slip out of my life. I resolved not to call him at all on the fourth day—but it turned out I wouldn’t have to.

I woke up from another of those nightmares to a rapping at my door, quick and urgent enough that I mistook it for gunfire as I tried to shake off the fog of sleep. Disoriented and covered in cold sweat, I leapt out of bed and stood there shaking, looking around the dark hotel room and trying to get my bearings. The knocking came again, more insistent than before, but I stared at the door for several moments before I gathered my wits enough to step into some pants and go to answer it. I pulled it open and squinted into the too-bright hall. At Blanche Nixon.

“Dick.” My name escaped her mouth in a gust of air, not quite a sob but close enough. Her eyes and nose were red, and there was a lipstick-stained handkerchief protruding from her fist. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know where else to go.”

I took her by the arm and drew her gently into the room. Only once I’d put on the lamp did I realize that it was very late, almost two o’clock in the morning. Blanche was wrapped in a coat, but I had a feeling she was wearing her waitressing uniform underneath it. Either she had come straight from work, or she hadn’t been home long enough to change.

“Is it Lewis?” I asked, though it seemed an unnecessary question. What else could it be?

She nodded once and pressed her handkerchief to her mouth for a moment, as if using it to hold back her emotion. “I wasn’t sure what to do. I can’t go to the police—”

“Did he try to hurt you?” I started to scan her for injuries, but there wasn’t much to see. Of course there wasn’t. Nix would never hurt her. I felt bad for even thinking it.

“No! No. But he…he broke a glass or two. And a lamp. And he kept saying he needed to leave. I don’t know where he wants to go or why, but he won’t listen to me and I…I couldn’t get him to calm down!”

“You left him alone?” 

She nodded, looking chastised and wringing the hankie between her hands. “I thought about calling, but I wasn’t sure I’d get through to you at this time of night. Anyway, he’s not going to run off when I’m not there. I doubt he’d go anywhere unless he could make a dramatic exit, and I don’t think…well, I don’t think he was in a fit state to even call a cab. He’s….he’s…”

I didn’t need to hear the end of the sentence to imagine it. Before she’d even finished speaking, I had gone to rummage through the closet to find a shirt and a jacket, which I pulled on as quickly as I could.

“He kept saying something about someone turning him in,” Blanche added while I got dressed. “Turning him in for what, I don’t know.”

I thought about that last night at the club and those three men that got Nix all worked up. Maybe he had gone back and picked a fight with them over something that had happened during the war. It was hard to imagine Nix taking a swing at anyone—he struck me as the kind of guy who was better with his words than his fists—but nothing would have been too difficult for me to believe at that point. If there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that the drink made him volatile, and there was no telling what he might do in a fit of desperation.

“Do you know if he went out earlier today? Maybe to a bar?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” Blanche said. “I didn’t ask. As soon as I realized how bad things were, I left to find you.”

“Alright,” I said, grabbing my hat and gesturing toward the door with it. “Let’s go.”

It wasn’t strictly decorous for a man and a woman to be walking through a hotel lobby together in the wee hours of the morning, especially when that woman was as painted up as Blanche was, but it was no time to worry about decorum. I let her keep hold of my arm and ignored the way my face flamed as I asked the front desk clerk to call us a cab. The ride to their house uptown took far longer than I was comfortable with, but I couldn’t exactly tell the driver to step on it so we could talk a drunk man off a ledge. Blanche squeezed my fingers the whole way, her fingers tightening and loosening rhythmically like a heartbeat. We each stared out our respective windows at the city passing by while we waited for the excruciating ride to come to an end.

I wouldn’t have been surprised to find the brownstone on fire or a slew of cop cars out front, but when we pulled up in front of the house, it was quiet and dark save for a light blazing out of one upstairs window. Blanche went ahead of me into the house, turning on lights in the foyer and calling for her brother. He didn’t answer her, and he didn’t need to. There was a racket coming from second floor, thumping and rattling and muffled cursing, like someone was tearing the house apart up there. I held up a hand at Blanche when she started toward the stairs.

“Why don’t you let me go up there and see if I can’t get him to calm down first?”

“He wouldn’t hurt me, Dick. He’d more likely come at you.”

“I’m not scared of him,” I said. I was more scared of what he’d say than what he’d do. If he was going to have some choice words for me, I didn’t want Blanche to be there to witness it. “Please, let me try.”

Blanche nodded and moved aside, holding onto the banister as if she needed it to keep her upright. I touched her shoulder as I went by, but she didn’t acknowledge me, her eyes fixed on the top of the stairs like she expected Nix to appear there, his rage burnt out, his brotherly affection returned. 

I followed the noise down the hall, moving slowly and quietly so I didn’t announce my presence any sooner than I had to. When I reached the doorway of Nix’s bedroom, I had to stop and take it all in. It was pure chaos. His bureau stood gaping, his dresser drawers all open, the majority of their contents disgorged onto the floor—clothes and books and papers and knick-knacks strewn around to such a degree that I could hardly see the rug underneath at all. A suitcase sat on his bed, but if he was trying to pack, he was doing a haphazard job of it at best. He clearly hadn’t made even the slightest attempt at folding anything, as sleeves and pant legs hung over the edge and some of the clothing appeared to have been balled up and tossed in like garbage. 

Nix himself was in just as much a state of disaster as his surroundings. He was rushing around the room with great agitation, every now and then stopping to pluck an item of clothing or a book off the floor and then tossing it carelessly into the bag. His gait was sloppy and lurching, and he kept stopping to steady himself on the furniture. If I had to judge, I’d say he hadn’t had a shower since before I last saw him, and he hadn’t shaved either. His shirt was unbuttoned and untucked, and his undershirt had gone translucent with sweat, even though it wasn’t particularly warm in the house. 

I waited silently in the doorway for him to notice me. When he did, he stopped in his tracks and his mouth fell open in surprise. 

“Dick,” he said hoarsely. 

“Going somewhere?” I asked, just barely managing to keep my voice even.

He looked down at the pair of trousers he had clutched in his hands, his jaw clenching. “Away from here,” he said, and threw the pants into his bag. 

I stepped into the room, my hands shoved in my pockets to keep me from reaching for him. I wanted to grab him and sit him down on the bed like I had that first night, except this time I would make him tell me everything that was wrong, and then we would fix it together. But he didn’t look like he was in a fixing mood, so I kept my hands to myself.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

He ignored me, bending over to rifle through more of the clothes on the ground. He gathered up a couple books, took them over to his desk, and slammed them down. I could tell it was just something to do with his hands, some reason not to look at me or stand still long enough for me to take a good measure of him. Sighing, I bent down and started picking things up off the floor myself—a gray shirt, a necktie, a book of poetry. I could feel his eyes on me as I walked over to the bed, but I didn’t look at him. I was waiting him out, and I didn’t have to wait long. Just as I pulled the pair of pants off the top of his bag to fold them, he came up beside me and grabbed my wrist. 

“Stop that,” he said. “I don’t need your help.”

I let the pants drop but didn’t pull my wrist away. “Where are you going, Nix?” I asked again.

The corner of his mouth twitched mirthlessly. “Vermont, I think. I heard that sodomy doesn’t land you in jail up there.”

He said it flat-voiced, but I made the mistake of twitching away from him, taking half a step back. A shadow passed across his face, but then, suddenly, he was laughing—a mean, throaty laugh that had him swaying on his feet and wiping at his eyes. Or maybe it was the drink that caused the last two.

“Look at you. I guess laying one on a guy doesn’t seem like much until you’re reminded it’s against the law.”

“Nix—”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he said, flapping a hand at me. “You aren’t in any danger. Just me. Which is why you’d better get out while you have a chance.”

“What, and leave Blanche to deal with you alone?” I was getting angry. I didn’t like the way he was toying with me or the way he didn’t seem to care how much of a mess he was making of things.

“Blanche doesn’t have to deal with me either,” he said. “If I leave, no one has to deal with me.”

My jaw clenched. “Right. You’ll just leave her to deal with the cops alone then. And with worrying about you.”

That seemed to catch him a little off guard, and the smirk faded from his lips. He brought one hand up and clawed it back through his greasy hair, which flopped back down over his forehead as soon as his arm fell to his side again. I tried to guess at my chances of getting him into a shower. Maybe if he had a few minutes to clean up and sober up, he’d calm down enough that I could reason with him. But as soon as I took a step forward, he took a step back, putting his hands up to stop me.

“What do you even care?” he asked. “This isn’t your battle. You don’t owe me anything because of what happened the other night.”

“Why would I think I owed you anything?” I was dodging his first question, about why I cared. I hoped he’d let it slide, but no such luck.

“Why are you here then? Blanche bats her eyelashes and you come running, is that it?”

It was a fair enough guess; it was what had brought me to that house the first time. Not her lashes, but her urgency. A couple weeks ago my life had been stagnant, but thanks to my brush with Blanche in that club, it had a current again. Everything was flowing toward Nix, and I was happy to drift along. No matter where it took me, I couldn’t imagine that it would be worse than sitting in my parents’ too-small house and dealing with their expectant looks, or sitting in that room at The Roosevelt and wondering when life would happen to me and what it would bring. I knew—I _thought_ I knew—what Nix would bring. Trouble, sure, but trouble I could deal with. I had survived a war, and I could damn well survive Lewis Nixon.

“I’m here for you,” I said, with enough certainty to dig a furrow in Nix’s brow. “Just tell me what happened. Let me help.”

I knew he wasn’t going to tell me. Not then. He deflated, his shoulders slumping and his head dropping almost to his chest, but there was still a steely determination to him, a stubbornness in his jaw and the thin line of his mouth that told me I hadn’t quite broken through yet. But I had broken through enough.

“All you need to know is that one of those men who spotted us at the club a few days back has plenty of reason to want to make trouble for me,” he said. “I stopped by the club earlier today, and Peter told me he’d asked about me—when I usually come in and whether I come alone or not.” When he lifted his gaze to mine again, his eyes were bright and wild in a way that made my stomach clench. “I’ve never seen him there before in my life, and then all of a sudden he shows up one night and is asking after me? He’s been looking for me. I know he has. And I’m not going to wait around to see what he plans to do once he catches me.”

“So you don’t even know for sure he’s said anything to the authorities?” I asked.

He cut his eyes away. “Like I said, I’m not waiting around to find out.”

My gut clenched again, curling itself into a tight fist of unease. I was trying hard not to listen to the small voice in my head that said he sounded like he’d come unhinged and was seeing enemies where there were none. Like the men I’d seen in combat sometimes, shooting at imaginary Germans long after they were gone. 

“Why not stay and face him then?” I asked. “It’s his word against yours, and you have money.”

“His word against mine? That’s cute, Dick. Do I look like a respectable character to you? Who do you think is going to vouch for me?”

“I’d vouch for you,” I said.

“Oh good. The guy I hardly know. They’ll have you painted as my lover before you even hit the courtroom.”

“Your sister—”

His scoffed, his expression darkening. “Who I’m either manipulating or fucking, depending on how spiteful people are feeling.”

I gaped at him. Surely _that_ was an exaggeration. Surely no one thought… But I could see from the expression on his face that it wasn’t an accusation he’d conjured from thin air. Suddenly, I was angry again, and not at Nix this time. I imagined all those so-called friends Blanche had told me about, the ones who saw Nix come back different from the war and didn’t extend any understanding. I imagined them sitting in a fine room somewhere, crystal glasses in their hands, bending their heads together so they could whisper dirty gossip. _I wonder what the Nixon siblings get up to in that house._

“Vermont then,” I said.

He shrugged. “It’s as good an idea as any.”

“Blanche will want to go with you.”

“I know.” 

I wanted him to stay. The strength of my wanting snuck up and surprised me—even scared me a little. It had been so long since I cared this much about something, and when it swept over me it felt like coming alive, like pins and needles in a thawing appendage, sharp and painful and such a relief. And when I looked at his face and saw that he wanted to stay too, I couldn’t stop myself; I crossed the few steps between us and took his face in my hands and kissed him. He smelled ripe and his breath was stale, but it was worth it for the way he sunk into me with a relief that matched mine, making a sound of grateful disbelief against my mouth.

After a few seconds, he jerked his head back, his eyes squeezed shut. “Come with us,” he whispered, like he was afraid to say it. 

I cupped his face in my hands and swept my thumbs across his cheekbones until he opened his eyes and looked at me again. His gaze was pleading. It made my heart hurt to look at him. I hardly had to think before I answered, “Alright. I will.” 

My gut was still rolling with uncertainty, and I still was worried about the things he wasn’t telling me, but I didn’t feel like I had any other choice. I didn’t want him to go, but if he was determined then I would go with him. Otherwise I would always wonder. Otherwise I would be back where I had been when I first came to New York, and I couldn’t do that. 

Before I went back downstairs, I convinced him to take a shower. I even led him to the bathroom myself and helped him strip out of his clothes, just to be sure he wouldn’t hurt himself in the state he was in. Now that the fight had gone out of him, weariness and drunkenness had made him wilting and unsteady on his feet, so he had to keep one hand on the wall while I helped him out of his pants and his socks. When I straightened up and pushed his hair off his forehead again, he managed to leer at me, but it was toothless, almost sad.

“You gonna get in with me?” he asked. 

I smiled at him and shook my head, then ducked past him to turn the water on. He brushed his fingers against mine before I walked from the room.

I found Blanche almost where I’d left her, sitting on the bottom step and twisting that handkerchief in her fingers again. She looked up when she heard me coming but didn’t move, so I sat down beside her and let her press up against me.

“You got him to shower,” she said, sounding relieved and worried at once. “You’re a miracle worker.”

“Don’t give me too much credit yet,” I sighed. “He wants to go to Vermont, Blanche.”

She didn’t look surprised. In fact, she nodded, putting her hand on my arm and squeezing it as if she felt the need to reassure me. That was backwards. I was supposed to be reassuring her, wasn’t I? 

“Tonight?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Maybe we could get him to hold off until first light.” Maybe together we could talk him out of it, I thought, but as if reading my mind, Blanche looked over at me and smiled sadly.

“I could use a vacation anyway. It’s best to just get it out of his system. It’ll blow over in a month or two, and we’ll come back.” 

“He asked me to come with you.”

At that, her posture slumped, her eyes falling shut in relief. “Oh, thank God.” Then, she stiffened again, opened her eyes again. “You said yes?”

I nodded but looked away, feeling self-conscious. I wasn’t sure I liked how she’d assumed I would agree. Just like I’d run out of my hotel room tonight without a thought. Just like I’d let her talk me into coming around for dinner in the first place. I wondered where it would stop. Would I have to go to the ends of the earth, and if I did, would I even care?

“Can I use your phone?” I asked.

She made a permissive sound and waved her hand toward the hall. I got to my feet and wandered in the direction of the kitchen until I found the telephone on the wall next to the coat closet. It was foolish, what I was about to do, but I needed someone other than the Nixon siblings to tell me I wasn’t making the wrong move. I wasn’t going to have any piece of mind otherwise. At first I thought about calling Harry, but he couldn’t be of any help. He’d just tell me to be careful again, and I needed a very different kind of advice. I needed to talk to someone worldly, someone who probably knew a great deal about a lot of things I didn’t. 

“Hello,” Ron said into the phone after the operator patched me through. It wasn’t until I heard how rough his voice sounded that I realized it was 3:30 in the morning.

“Ron, it’s Dick,” I said, wincing. “Sorry to wake you.”

“Dick,” he repeated uncertainly. “Is everything alright?”

I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “What can you tell me about Vermont?”

The pause that followed went on long enough that I could tell he was putting all the pieces together in his head; he knew what I was getting at. I wished then that I had been talking to him all along. I should have known I could trust him.

“Vermont is nice,” he said at last. “It’s a good time to visit. The leaves will be changing soon.” There was another pregnant silence, in which I could tell he had more to say. His breath hitched a little in my ear before he went on. “I’ve been thinking about asking Carwood if he’d like to go up there with me around Christmastime.”

I slumped against the wall, thanking God—not for the first time—for dropping the wild and wonderful Ronald Speirs into my life. 

“If you need someplace to stay,” he went on, “I know of a nice little cottage on Lake Champlain. It gets rented out in the summer, but it should be empty now. I can give you the information.”

I went to get some paper from Blanche, then came back and wrote down the address and the name of the person with whom I should inquire about the rental. It seemed like everything was sliding into place, all the little pieces fitting better than they should considering. I’d had not one single signpost for years, but now it seemed like I had dozens of them. Take Lewis and Blanche. Go to Vermont. Watch the leaves change. Figure out my feelings far away from danger and watchful eyes. The unease I felt after walking into Nix’s bedroom had dissipated, and in its place was a calming sense of purpose. 

The shower had long since shut off upstairs, but Nix hadn’t come back down. After I told Ron goodnight and apologized again for calling so late, I went back into the foyer and found Blanche, still sitting on the steps, still waiting for her brother. I caught her by the hands and pulled her to her feet.

“Do you have a car?” I asked.

“Mother has one,” she said.

“One you can use?”

“She won’t miss it.”

“Alright then.” I gave her hands a squeeze. “Go pack your things, and have your brother pack his. Either I can meet you back here or—”

“We’ll come by and pick you up,” she said. She looked like she didn’t want to be idle, sitting around waiting for me as well as Nix. I understood. 

“Around six o’clock?” I asked, then added, “So we can all get a little more sleep in.”

There was another thump from upstairs. Not a bad thump, like something being thrown, but an innocent one, like a shoe hitting the ground after someone takes it off, or maybe a book falling off a bed. Still, it made Blanche flinch, and she blushed when she realized I noticed.

“I’m not sure I can sleep any,” she said, “but I’ll try. We’ll come by around six.”

The cab ride back to the hotel passed like a dream. I sank into the dark back seat and watched the city lights blur past the window and felt oddly at peace. I always felt better when I knew what my next steps were, even if I couldn’t be sure of the outcome. The purpose-shaped hole in my chest was starting to disappear. I found myself daydreaming about red and gold leaves and early morning swims in a cold lake and having coffee in the morning with a clean and sober Nix in a kitchen flooded with sunlight. It was the first time I’d been able to picture the future since the war had ended.

At the hotel, I stopped at the front desk and asked them to send two telegrams for me, one to my parents and one to Harry, letting them know that I was going to Vermont and I’d give them an address to reach me at when I got settled. Then, I went up to my room to pack, which didn’t take long at all. After I finished, I laid down in bed, but sleep wouldn’t come. I felt wide awake and eager to get on the road, to leave this place of transition behind. New York had not been particularly unkind to me, but I didn’t think I would miss it either. 

When the sky started to turn gray outside my window, I got up and went into the bathroom to go through the motions of brushing my teeth, shaving, splashing cold water on my face. It was just a few minutes before six when I went downstairs with my bags. I went to the front desk to check out, handing over more of my savings than I wanted to, then walked through the lobby one last time, stepped through the revolving door, and out onto the sidewalk.

In the early hours of the morning, the city was less busy than it was in the dead of night. Few cars were passing on the street, and the only people on the sidewalk were sleepy-eyed vagrants and a scant handful of early risers on their way to work. It was quieter than I had ever seen it, quieter even than in the dead of night, when I was coming back from the club with Nix or from a bar with the Easy Company men. Everything looked washed-out and gray and tranquil. I stood on the sidewalk for I don’t know how long, looking up and down the street and soaking in the quiet.

They rolled up to the curb in a powder blue Packard convertible. The top was down and Blanche was at the wheel, her hair hidden under a scarf, while Nix sat sideways in the back with his legs stretched out across the seat and his head tipped back, his eyes shut. Even in the pallid light filtering between the buildings, I could see the dark smudges under his eyes, but at least he looked clean and calm. I hoped he had gotten a little sleep. 

“You said your mom wouldn’t miss the car,” I said to Blanche as she got out to meet me. I waved off her attempts to grab one of my bags and took them around to the trunk myself.

“She won’t,” Blanche said. “I doubt she even remembers she owns it. I don’t think she knows how to drive.”

It baffled me, the idea that someone who didn’t know how to drive would own a car, but I didn’t say anything about it. I focused on getting my bags situated, then walked around the car and climbed into the passenger seat. When, I turned to look over my shoulder at Nix, he cracked one eye open and flashed me a crooked smile. 

“How are you feeling?” I asked him.

“I’m feeling ready for a road trip,” he said, and shut both eyes again. There were a pair of sunglasses tucked into the collar of his shirt, and he fished them out and pushed them onto his face, even though it wasn’t yet bright enough to merit them.

Blanche started up the car again, and I turned to look at her as she pulled out onto the all-but-empty road.

“There’s a map in the glove compartment,” she said, waving one hand in that direction. “You can tell me where to go.”

“I’m not the best with maps,” I admitted sheepishly. 

“I am,” Nix said, reaching a hand through the front seats. Blanche and I both glanced over our shoulders in surprise. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not useles,” he said. “Give it here.”

I opened the glove box, took out the map, and placed it in his hand. Our fingers touched, and I saw his mouth quirk upward again. I couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or shut behind the glasses, but I smiled back anyway.

“Alright,” Nix said as he unfolded the map. He sat up a little, and his glasses slid down his nose so he could look at me over them. “Tell me where we’re headed, and I’ll get us there.”

I fished the piece of paper out of my pocket and handed it back to him. He took it from me with a grin. I hooked my arm around the back of my seat, rested my chin on it, and watched him—the way his mouth twisted with concentration, the way his eyes scanned the paper, the way his fingers traced roads and highways and rivers. I didn’t turn back around until we’d gotten out of the city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This seems like a good time to say that I am no historian. After some googling, I found conflicted stories on whether Vermont did indeed have no anti-sodomy laws in the late 1940s or not. My source is [this article](http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/1940s-Sodomy_Laws#.V8DLQZgrKhd), but then Wikipedia said Vermont's anti-LGBT laws didn't get repealed until 1977 sooo...idk. Let's just roll with it!!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience in waiting for this chapter, guys! Since I've been slow lately, it's probably safe to say that chapters will be coming no sooner than once every two weeks from here on out. I think there will only be three or four more, so we're getting there. :) Thanks so much for all your support and lovely comments!

If we had been booking it, it would have been a six hour drive to Alburg, Vermont, but Blanche insisted on driving the whole way and she wasn’t the lead-foot type. The roads we took wound through thick woods and stretches of rolling green fields and tiny old New England towns, over sluggish creeks and past glassy ponds. We might as well have been on a scenic tour of the countryside, not running away from whatever vague danger lay behind us in the city.

Whatever urgency Nix had been feeling in the wee hours had burned off, so he didn’t seem to mind his sister’s leisurely pace. Periodically she would look over her shoulder and ask him for a cigarette, which he would put in his own mouth to light before passing it up to her, but I never saw her take more than a drag or two before she let it burn down to a column of ash that eventually got carried off by the wind. She steered with one pale wrist on the wheel and the other hand never leaving the gearshift, even when we were cruising. I doubted she had been behind the wheel of a car many times in her life, but she seemed to enjoy it. She wore a slight smile the whole way up the road.

Around lunchtime we stopped to eat in a town so small it hardly could be called a town at all. Nix saw a sign advertising _The Best Cup of Coffee for Miles!_ , and he called out to Blanche to turn off at the last second. We slid into the parking lot in a spray of gravel, my knuckles white on the door handle. It was a humble place, the kind that catered to blue collar men coming off nearby fields for lunch. A place with chipped linoleum floors of indeterminate color and rickety chairs covered in cracked vinyl. It smelled like burnt coffee and cooking oil and cigarettes inside. The windowsills were dusty and full of dead flies. Blanche wrinkled her nose when we were seated. Nix looked oddly delighted.

“This place sure is colorful,” he said as he opened up the menu. “I bet the food is better than the Waldorf.”

The food wasn’t better than the Waldorf, and if it really was the best cup of coffee for miles, I’d wager it was because there _was_ no other place to get coffee for miles. Blanche’s salad was limp and drowning in dressing, and my chicken was so dry I went through three glasses of water trying to choke it down. Nix ate his meatloaf with gusto though, and looked wholly satisfied. But then, there was still time for things to take a turn. I knew better by then to expect his good mood to last, and the longer it went on, the more uneasy I felt. It didn’t help that he slipped a flask out of his pocket to doctor his coffee halfway through the meal.

When the bill came, he tossed down a wad of cash that looked like way too much to me, but he pulled me toward the door before I could say anything. Blanche trailed behind us, and when we emerged back into the sunlight, she took a deep breath and let it out in a rush.

“That’s the last time we let you tell us where to turn off, Lew,” she said. But it would have seemed an empty threat if we didn’t have just another hour or so of driving to do anyway. 

We rolled into Alburg just after two in the afternoon. It was like a town out of a storybook, sharp-peaked cottages and white churches all nestled among trees still heavy with green leaves. I could tell it was going to be a beautiful place in in just a few more weeks. Here and there I saw a glimpse of gold, but the oranges and reds of fall had not yet arrived. 

We had to pull over on main street and ask a woman pushing a baby in a stroller how to get to the address we were looking for, and she directed us kindly, with a smile on her face and no hint of suspicion or distrust of outsiders, though I could feel Nix trying to make himself small and scarce in the back seat. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the flashy car we were in was going to make us stick out like sore thumbs regardless. The woman would probably be telling all her friends about the three nice people in the blue convertible who were looking to rent a house nearby. 

When we pulled up in front of the address Ron had given me, I opened my mouth to tell Blanche and Nix they could wait in the car, but they were out and going up the walk before I had a chance, as if they knew I might try to cut them out of this part. It was the money, I imagined. They didn’t want me to put up the money. They weren’t too proud to let me go as far as I had with them, but they were too proud to be taken care of financially.

The rental office was in a small square house, white with black shutters, a sign out front that said _William Greeley_ and _Real Estate, Loans, Insurance_ in curly black lettering. There was a bell over the front door that chimed when we walked in. Inside the front door was a small sitting area and one long mahogany desk, behind which a balding, silver-haired man sat staring boredly into space, a pair of glasses perched on the end of his nose. He looked at as and then glanced away, as though he was sure we couldn’t be there for him, even though there was no one else around and nothing else to do but walk right up to him and say hello.

“I was sent by Ron Speirs, to see about a house for rent?” I said. Though Blanche and Nix had rushed up the walk ahead of me, they were now huddled together in my shadow like shy children.

“Oh!” the man said, suddenly perking up. “You're Mr. Speirs' friends! He called ahead and told me to expect you. I have the most beautiful place.”

While he rushed around behind the desk, gathering papers from various folders and drawers, he kept up a steady stream of one-sided conversation. Mr. Greeley was his name, and he had been in real estate for “eons”, he said. Everyone from New York and Boston and Philadelphia liked to escape to the relatively quieter and prettier wilderness of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine during the summer and fall—and sometimes even the winter if they could stand the snow. Greeley owned some properties himself, and he also acted as a go-between for other families who wanted to rent their houses but weren’t sure how to go about it. The more he talked, the more it sounded like he was trying to talk us into going into real estate ourselves, and his enthusiasm had climbed to such heights by the end of his speech that he’d almost sold me on it. 

“So what brings the three of you to Vermont?” he asked as he arranged papers in front of me on the counter. 

Nix must have sensed that money was about to change hands, because he came from behind me and elbowed me out of the way, taking the pen from Greeley’s hand and fixing an unsettling grin on his face. I was suddenly worried about what he’d say, but I didn’t get a chance to come up with an answer myself. He slapped a hand around my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “This fellow right here just married my sister,” he said, inclining his head back toward Blanche. “The three of us are celebrating together.”

Ice slid into my stomach, but I struggled not to let my alarm show on my face. It was an unnecessary lie. A stupid lie. There was nothing strange about a pair of siblings and their friend traveling together, but now we were saddled with this story we’d have to keep up. Who knew how many people Greeley knew and how much he might blab about the nice red-head fellow and his beautiful new wife, staying out at the house on the lake with their brother?

“Well, isn’t that nice!” Greeley said.

I pasted on a smile and felt Blanche sidle up under my arm to complete the picture. “Thank you,” I said, avoiding looking at Nix for fear that my annoyance would show on my face. “We’ve had a long day of driving though, so if you don’t mind…”

He got the hint and started rushing through the rest of his routine, rattling off numbers and information to Nix, who was signing the papers and then fishing out his wallet so he could pay the first couple weeks’ rent. _When you leave, you can drop your keys off in the brass box outside. They prefer you don’t smoke in the house, but if you have to, do it in the kitchen. When you head up there, follow the signs for Isle La Motte. You’ll have to stay at a hotel for tonight, while someone gets the house ready. There’s a nice motor inn just down…_ I wasn’t listening as much as I was watching Nix listen. He was smiling with what probably looked like excitement to Greeley but looked to me like amusement, like this was some kind of game and he thought he was winning it. I wished he would have let me in on the rules. It was fine though, I told myself. It was going to be fine. Let him tell his stories and have his fun. We’d get to the house on the island and things would settle right down.

After every I was dotted and every T was crossed, Greeley gathered up all his papers, tapped them on the table, then stuck out his hand to shake Nix’s. “You all have a good time, Mr. Welsh. And be sure to let me know if you need anything.”

When I glanced down at the rental agreement that was at the top of the stack of papers, I saw he had signed it _Harry Welsh_. 

We only just made it through the front door before Blanche laid into him, taking hold of his arm to yank him down the sidewalk ahead of me. “What were you thinking, Lewis? What _are_ you thinking, lying to him like that?”

“I was thinking it doesn’t hurt to tell a little tale,” he said. “Where’s your sense of fun?”

“You were thinking those men might come looking for you,” I said. And I was right. The smile slid off his face.

“Better safe than sorry, right?”

“Why would they come after you?” I asked, unable to stave off my curiosity any longer. “What could you possibly have done that’s so bad they—”

“Stop.” He sounded weary, all of the amusement gone right out of him. “Let’s just get to the hotel. I’m beat.”

“And I suppose at the hotel I’ll have to pretend I’m Mrs. Dick Winters?” Blanche said bitterly.

“I suppose you will.” With that, he hurried ahead of us to the car and jumped in the back. End of discussion. What could we do anyway? March back in there and tell Greeley that Harry Welsh was really Lewis Nixon, and Lewis Nixon was a liar?

“It’s alright,” I told Blanche, who was standing still on the sidewalk next to me looking troubled. “We’ll manage. He’s under a lot of stress.”

“Well, I’m under a lot of stress too,” she said. But a moment later, she sighed and looked up at me, smiling a little. “You’re right. At least he’s in a better mood.”

Yes. At least there was that.

We rode to the hotel in silence. I could sense that Nix was pouting a little, upset that we weren’t being good sports and that I’d brought up the mysterious men again, and while I didn’t want him to be sore at me, I also didn’t think I owed him an apology. Either his crankiness would burn off or it’d get worse, and I thought I’d already proved I could deal with the latter.

The hotel was actually more of a motel, but it was nothing like those sleazy ones that lined the highways outside New York. This one had no neon, no gaudy colors, and a fresh coat of paint. The front office was housed in a little white cottage with royal blue shutters, and all the rooms were in one long white building, each of the doors emblazoned with a blue number. The parking lot was lined on one end by trees, and the buildings were hemmed in by them too. It was easy to forget we were in the middle of town, rather than the middle of the woods. 

The idyllic setting made all of us forget to be snappish with each other. Nix even let me pay for the rooms—two right next to each other with a door adjoining so we could shuffle ourselves around properly once we got inside. I wasn’t at all entertaining the idea of actually sharing a room with Blanche, but it wasn’t until I was setting down my bags in the room Nix had set himself up in that I realized I wasn’t sure how good of an idea it was for me to share a room with him either. Both rooms had just one bed, and as I stood there looking at Nix, who had his arms pillowed behind his head and his eyes half-closed, I wondered what I’d gotten myself into. 

I’d been running on pure instinct until that moment. Every kiss, every decision that kept me in Nix’s life a little while longer, all of it had been based on a gut feeling. Something told me that gut feeling wasn’t going to help me much with the situation that lay in front of me now. 

Blanche came to the open door between the two rooms and looked in at us, at me standing there looking at the bed and Nix laying on it looking at me. I felt my face heating up as she looked back and forth between us, but it was Nix that her eyes finally landed on.

“Are you going to be alright in here?” she asked him. I got the feeling there was some double meaning in her words, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

“Don’t worry, Blanche,” Nix said without looking at her. “We’ll be just fine.”

“I can take the floor,” I said.

Nix grinned at the ceiling. “You’ll do no such thing.”

“Well, I’ll let you boys figure it out,” Blanche said, and I thought I caught a hint of amusement in her eyes as she turned away. “Knock when you’re ready to go out and find some dinner.” She shut the door between our rooms, and I heard the click of the lock, and then it was just me and Nix alone.

“I’m going to take a shower,” I announced. “Wash the road off.” Give myself time to clear my head a little before we jumped back into the argument about who was or wasn’t going to be sleeping on the floor. Nix made a sound of vague acknowledgment, and I turned my back on him to get my things out of one of my suitcases. 

I took my time in the bathroom, standing in the shower until the water ran cold and my mind went blank. It wasn’t hard to convince myself there was no reason to be worried. Not about Nix’s made-up story. Not about the lone bed. In a few hours we’d go out to dinner. Nix would be back to pulling Blanche’s leg, and maybe I’d sit next to her in a banquette and slip my arm around her shoulders, so we’d look like newlyweds to anyone who might look, and it’d be like a game. We’d laugh about it in the car back to the motel, and tomorrow we’d go to our little house on the island and everything would be alright. 

It was with that fine image in my head that I went back out into the room to find Nix out of bed and pacing. He had taken one of the smudged glasses off the paper doily on the dresser and had filled it with a good measure of whiskey, which sloshed precariously as he slouched back and forth across the carpet. The curtains had been pulled shut across the window, so the room was dark other than the light from the lamp on the bedside table. 

He glanced at me but didn’t stop his pacing for a few more seconds. I was just opening my mouth to ask him what was wrong when he stopped and sat down hard on the edge of the bed.

“I guess,” he said, “you’ve earned the right to hear my story now.”

I tried my best not to look gobsmacked, but I’m certain I failed. “You don’t—” I started, but then I cut myself off. I had been about to tell him he didn’t owe me anything, but the truth was, I wanted to know what was going on. If he was prepared to tell me, I wasn’t prepared to stop him.

“Come here,” Nix said, patting the bed next to him. “Don’t hover. You’ll make me nervous.”

He already seemed pretty nervous to me, but I didn’t argue. I went and put my things away in my suitcase, then perched myself carefully on one corner of the mattress, keeping a safe amount of space between us. I wanted him to have room to say what he needed to say. Judging by his troubled expression, it wasn’t going to come easily. He sat there in silence for a while, rubbing one hand on his thigh, working up the courage to start talking. It was too quiet in the room. There was no road noise, no voices coming through the walls, nothing but the rasp of Nix’s palm against his trousers and the click of his throat when he swallowed. It was like we were alone in the world. Alone together. The thought was more comforting than it should have been.

“During the war, there was…a man,” Nix began, staring at his shoes. I wasn’t surprised that was how the story began. 

“We’d been…messing around a little. Nothing serious. You know how it is.” I didn’t, but I nodded anyway, even though he wasn’t looking at me. He took a drink from his glass before going on. “We weren’t as careful as we should have been, and one day some private caught us in a, uh, compromising position. I threatened him with everything I could think of, but in the end, he told our commanding officer. And…” He swallowed hard. My hands twitched in my lap, itching to reach for him, but I didn’t think he’d want or accept the comfort. “These things happen in wartime, and people turn a blind eye to it, but when it comes into the light, someone’s head has to roll. In this case, it was the other guy’s head instead of mine. I was too valuable. I was told to say he had come on to me, and they’d strip him of his battlefield commission—he’d recently been promoted—and I’d come out of it unscathed.

“You know about Operation Varsity?” he asked, looking up as if to make sure I was still there.

I nodded, afraid to speak for fear that he’d stop talking.

“I didn’t even need to be there that day. I had the option to stay back, but I wanted to get another jump in. Do you know I never even fired my gun in combat?” He paused, as if waiting for some kind of shock or disgust from me, but I just watched him, waiting for him to go on. He sighed, turning his eyes down to the bedspread. “We took a lot of fire. I don’t know what possessed them to fly us over the Rhine in the goddamn daylight, but hey. I guess that’s why I’m not Eisenhower. Anyway, I got out, and a handful of others got out behind me, and then the plane was hit. I got a front row seat to the show. Watched it fall right out of the sky.

“The guy I’d been involved with—his name was Jim—he was in the plane. He was one of the ones that didn’t make it out. The whole mess between us had come out just a few days before.”

“Oh, Lew,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

He took a deep breath and continued as if he hadn’t heard me. His expression was so dark it seemed to be sucking the light out of the room. “That kind of gossip traveled through the men like the wind, of course, and all Jim’s friends didn’t look too favorably on me after that mess. He was well-liked by the men, and after he was killed, that just made them all more angry. To tell you the truth, I don’t blame them. It was awful, what I did. He could have at least died a hero, but instead he died disgraced.” He shook his head, his fingers gripping the bedspread, bunching it up. “It should have been me.”

I didn’t know what to say. Despite Nix’s insistence that he and this Jim had just been fooling around, I could tell it was more than that. And to lose someone like that, and before there was a chance to set things right with them—I couldn’t even imagine how he must have felt. There was nothing I could say that would make it better. All I could do was reach out and touch him, let my fingers curl around his and pry open his grip so he could grip my hand instead. 

“So that’s the story,” he said, his voice rough. “And that’s why those men are looking for me. I think the one who was asking after me at the club is a man by the name of Stryker. He was one of Jim’s closest friends, and he made it pretty clear before he got discharged that he wasn’t going to forget what I’d done. I guess he decided it’s about time for me to get my just desserts.”

“Are…are you sure?” I asked tentatively. “What if he just wants to talk? To let you know he doesn’t blame you?”

Nix snorted. “That’s a little naive.”

It probably was. I couldn’t say I wouldn’t want revenge if it had been my friend who got demoted, my friend who had been killed. But I could see it was tearing him up inside, and it was hard for me to feel anything but sympathy. I squeezed his fingers and waited until he looked at me before I shook my head.

“It sounds to me like you were scared and under a lot of pressure. I’m sure you would have made it right if you’d had the time. There’s not way you could have known you wouldn’t get that chance.”

“We were in the middle of a _war_ , Dick. I should have assumed I wouldn’t get the chance.”

“But you can’t go on letting it eat you up.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked, sitting up a little straighter. “And why not? Why shouldn’t I let it eat at me? I’d say feeling miserable over it for the rest of the my life is a pretty fucking small price to pay. Hell, I’m not even sure why I’m running from these guys. If I had any decency, I’d let them find me and do whatever they want to do. Or I’d turn myself in and save them the trouble.”

“Nix,” I said softly, “for what crime?”

He looked at me like I’d slapped him. “What?”

“For what crime?” I said again. “You cared about another man—that’s all. Maybe he didn’t deserve to take the fall for it, but that doesn’t mean you deserved it instead.”

He stared at me for what seemed like forever, his eyes narrowed like he thought I was joking and was waiting for me to laugh. I wasn’t joking though, not in the slightest. In the course of my life, I’d sat in countless church pews, heard countless sermons about how man shall not lie with man, for it is an abomination. But I felt certain in that moment—more than ever in my life—that God would not have begrudged Lewis Nixon his comfort in wartime. I felt certain that the feeling in my chest, the way I wanted to take Nix and hide him away from the world and soothe his wounded spirit, was not a sin. I didn’t care if the law said otherwise.

“You’re a fool,” Nix whispered with something that sounded a whole lot like awe. The cloud that had descended on him while he was talking started to clear away, and he was looking at me with confusion and disbelief and hope. I saw then that he’d expected this to be the final straw. He’d dragged me to Vermont before he told me, because it’d be harder for me to get away, but he still had expected me to run for the door. Or spit in his face. Or at least tell him he should be ashamed. He’d been carrying this secret around with him for years, had convinced himself it made him ugly and unworthy, and now that it was out, he couldn’t believe I was still there. My heart ached for him. I squeezed his hand with all my might and then dragged it to my mouth, turning it over so I could kiss his palm like I’d done the night we met. 

“You’re a fool, Dick Winters,” he said again. But before I had time to argue with him, he was surging forward, grabbing me by the shirt, and pulling me into him.

I just barely managed to catch the glass out of his hand before it could spill to the floor. As Nix dragged me up toward the pillows, whiskey sloshed over my wrist and onto the bedspread, the smell of it filling the room. I groped blindly for the night stand and managed to set the glass down just before Nix pulled me close again. Our mouths collided, and then his arms were around my waist, pulling me on top of him, flush against him, so we were touching everywhere, everywhere. I found myself laughing against his lips, thinking about how worried I’d been about sharing this bed with him not so long ago. I wasn’t so worried now.

“What is it?” he asked, pushing me away enough that I could see the furrow in his brow. 

“Nothing,” I said, and kissed him again before he could question me further. When I reached for his face, he smelled the whiskey on me and turned his head to run his tongue over the sensitive skin on the underside of my wrist. His eyes met mine, looking for my reaction, and he must have liked what he saw because he licked at me again, then closed his mouth over my wrist bone and sucked. 

“You taste good,” he murmured.

My eyes fluttered closed as I shook my head, cheeks flaming. “It’s the whiskey.”

“No,” he said. “It’s you.”

He bucked up against me, and suddenly I found myself flat on my back with him hovering over me, his fingers sneaking up under my shirt. His hands were warm and soft, devoid of calluses, not rough like mine were from years of helping out around the farm. I wanted him to touch my everywhere with those hands. I wanted it so much that I rushed to help him, taking hold of the hem of my shirt and sitting up a little to drag it off over my head. Then it was his turn to laugh.

“I imagined you might be shy,” he said as he fit his hands to my ribs. “I see I was wrong.”

It was a good thing he didn’t know why I was hiding in the bathroom earlier, I thought. But it seemed silly to be shy now, when he had laid himself bare to me in the only way that really mattered. Everything else that happened now would be smaller than that, less significant. Still, I wanted it. Oh how I wanted it. All he would give me.

He slotted his hips between my thighs and kissed me again, his hands gliding down my sides and across my chest, over my shoulders, up to my neck. His touch was greedy and searching, like he’d been waiting to learn me this way and he intended to savor it. And I intended to savor it too. I closed my eyes and concentrated on his touch, where his hands went and where they didn’t dare go yet. He kept skirting my stomach, avoiding reaching for my fly, and I started to wonder if maybe _he_ wasn’t the shy one. 

In an effort to hurry things along, I went to work on the buttons of his shirt. I had to open my eyes to see what I was doing, and when I glanced up at him, I found him watching me intently, the crease in his brow deepening. He still didn’t believe, I thought. He still didn’t think I really wanted to be there with him. But it didn’t stop him, because after a moment’s hesitation he reached behind his neck and tugged his shirt off only half-unbuttoned, and his t-shirt with it, leaving him bare to the waist. Daunted by this new stretch of bare skin, I acted without thinking, sitting up enough to get my mouth on his chest and flick my tongue across his skin. He made a small, shocked noise and clutched me by the shoulders, his hips moving against mine in a way that made us both groan.

As if to say _enough of that_ , he pushed me back down to the bed and kissed me once more, deeply and thoroughly, then laced our fingers together and planted my hands into the pillow. “You’ve never done any of this before?” he asked, in a tone of voice that said he already knew I hadn’t. 

“I’m a fast learner,” I said.

He chuckled against my cheek, then kissed me again. I could get addicted to these kisses, I thought. The softness of his mouth. The shamelessness. The way my heart jumped in my chest. “I don’t doubt that,” he said. His fingers slid down my stomach then and finally started picking apart my fly. “What about with a woman though? Have you been with a woman?”

I gritted my teeth and shook my head, oddly loathe to admit it. I didn’t think I had any reason to be embarrassed, but that was hard to remember when a man was sliding his fingers into your shorts.

“Jesus,” he said quietly, just as he wrapped his hand around me. I gasped and bucked up against him, and that made him chuckle again. “I guess I better make it good then.”

Suddenly, his warm weight disappeared. My eyes, which had slipped most of the way shut, snapped open to find him situated with his shoulders between my legs now, his hands working the waistband of my shorts down far enough for my cock to spring free. He put his mouth on me without warning or preamble, and I sucked in a sharp, agonized breath, my fingers flying to tangle in his hair. He pulled off and looked up at me with a grin.

“Better keep it down. Unless you want my sister to know what we’re up to.”

That was assuming she didn’t know already. I thought of her standing there are the door between the rooms, asking Nix if we would be alright, and I wondered if she wasn’t warning him against this. She had to know, right? As close as they were? She had to know that he preferred men in his bed. But then Nix’s mouth descended on me again, and I didn’t want to think about Blanche anymore. I had to concentrate on following his orders anyway, on keeping myself quiet, even if it meant biting down on my bottom lip until I was surprised I wasn’t chewing clean through it.

I could feel him studying me, even through the haze of arousal and disbelief that clouded my mind. When I let a small sound slip, he’d run his tongue over the same spot again or bob his head in that same way. I got the feeling that he liked the feedback, so I started giving it to him more freely, tightening my fingers in his hair or hissing encouragements under my breath. Most of the words ended up broken in half, cut short by the clench of my jaw as I made an effort to be quiet, but I knew he got the picture, because he hummed happily, and I could see where he had one arm snaked down between his own legs to palm himself through his pants.

“Wait, Nix,” I said when I could feel things starting to move a little too far along. I wanted him closer, not way down on the end of the bed where I couldn’t get to him. I wanted to touch him too, and to feel the weight of his body again. Or to feel him spread out under me—whichever he wanted. Anything he wanted, as long as we were close again.

When he pulled off of me, his face was flushed and he was breathing hard. He smirked up at me like the cat who got the canary and then pushed himself up on his elbows. “Something the matter?”

“Come back up here,” I said, getting my fingers around his bicep and tugging. “I want to touch you.”

He studied me for a moment, running his tongue across his bottom lip in a way I found highly distracting. Another few seconds of that and I was going to have to haul him up forcibly so I could kiss him again. 

“Just touch?” he said at last, drumming his fingers on my thigh. “I think I can do you one better. Hold on.”

He got up off the bed, and I watched his back as he walked over to his bag and dug through it. When he came back, he tossed something down on the bedspread next to my shoulder. Frowning, I reached for it and picked it up. It was a tin of Vaseline. 

“Do I need to explain what that’s for?” Nix asked. 

I looked up at him in time to see him strip off his pants and underwear, and the question he’d just asked me flew right out of my brain. My gaze crawled over him hungrily as he climbed back onto the bed. It wasn’t as thought I’d never seen another man naked—I’d been involved in sports most of my life, and then there was the Army of course—but it was different like this. Every ripple of muscle, every patch of skin that shined with perspiration, every rise and every hollow seemed to offer some new secret, and I wanted to discover it all. When he straddled my hips, I reached for his waist and then slid my hands to the small of his back and let them rest there, unsure of where else to put them.

“Dick?” he said, and I realized he had asked me a question. Something about the Vaseline.

“No,” I said, blushing. “I don’t—”

“All you’ve gotta do is lie there,” he said. “Alright?”

That didn’t seem like it could be true, but I watched silently as he picked up the tin and coated his fingers, then reached behind his back to—

“Oh,” I said. “Don’t you want me to do that?”

He shook his head at me. “What’d I just say?” 

So all I could do was watch—watch as a flush crept down his neck, watch as the muscles in his arm bunched and strained. His mouth fell open, but he didn’t make a sound. He didn’t look at me either, his eyes falling mostly shut so his thick lashes cast shadows under his eyes in the dim yellow light. 

“Get your pants off. And sit up a little,” he said breathlessly, then lifted up a little so I could reach past him and do as he told me. Once I’d kicked the rest of my clothes off the end of the bed and propped myself against the headboard, he moved forward so he was straddling me again and then reached down with a greasy hand and gripped me, stroked me a few times slick me up. My breath was coming fast and my fingers dug into his hips in anticipation.

“Dick,” he said to get my attention. I looked up into his eyes, which were wide open now and fixed on mine. They looked black, so black I thought I could fall into them and fall forever. Maybe I already had. Maybe I had started falling back when we first met, and I was still waiting to hit bottom. 

“Are you sure—” he started, but I cut him off with a vehement shake of my head and reached up to pull him in for a kiss. I didn’t want him to second-guess. I was afraid it would make me second-guess too. 

“I want you,” I said when we broke apart.

That seemed to satisfy him, because next thing I knew, he was reaching back to guide me to him. When he started to sink down, it was all I could do not to cry out. I huffed out a breath and squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that if I couldn’t see him I could stave off the need to push my hips up to meet him. My fingers were almost certainly bruising him, but he didn’t complain, only let out a low groan and tipped forward at the waist until our foreheads were pressed together and he was breathing hot against my cheek. I thought I would die before he even got me all the way inside him; I would burst out of my skin or my heart would beat its way right out of my chest. But if that was the way I was to go, so be it, I thought. Better here, in this way, than anywhere else.

“It’s been a while,” he admitted in a half-whisper, almost to himself. I must have looked concerned, because he pulled away a little and grinned at me. “You feel good,” he said. “Real good.”

I hummed in agreement, and it lengthened into a soft moan when he lifted up and sank back down again until our bodies were flush. I was hot all over, hot inside and out, burning up where our skin touched. Nix put his hands on my chest for leverage, and I let my own drift down over his flanks, then searched with the fingers of one hand for the place where our bodies were joined, just to be sure it was real, it was really happening. 

“Alright?” he asked me, his voice ragged.

“Yes,” I said, and pulled him in to seal it with a kiss.

I kept my mouth on his as we moved together, so he could swallow my sounds and I could swallow his, licking them greedily from his mouth. My hand gripped the clammy skin at his nape to keep him close, and his cock juddered across my stomach with each roll of his hips. I was stricken by the way he moved, the way he looked at me and touched me, certain that no one in the history of the world had ever felt this much or this good. Toward the end, he leaned into me and asked me to touch him, and as I reached down and curled my fingers around him, I planted my feet on the bed and thrust up, making him muffle a cry against my shoulder. I meant to shush him, but I was too busy coming undone myself, pushing up into the hot clutch of his body, stroking his sweat-slick cock, biting down on my bottom lip as the fire inside me burned hotter and hotter and then consumed me entirely, flashing white-hot through my veins. I wrapped my arm around the small of his back so I could pull him in closer, harder, until it seemed we were melting together. Until I wasn’t alone and he wasn’t alone and neither of us had to be alone ever again. 

We lay together afterward, his mess drying on my stomach, his leg thrown over mine, and I waited for the part where I felt foolish or guilty but it never came. Mostly I felt satisfied, a little tired, and like I might be happy if we never left that motel bed again. I was more at peace in that moment than I could remember feeling in years, maybe ever. I’m certain he would have told me it was probably just the post-coital glow talking, but I know it had more to do with who I was sharing the post-coital glow with. That feeling doesn’t come around every day. It doesn’t happen with just anyone.

“We should go clean up,” Nix said into my shoulder, but when I looked down at him his eyes were closed and he looked like he was most of the way toward sleep. 

“In a minute,” I said, curling my arm around him and trailing my fingers across his shoulder blade. He looked peaceful too, and I didn’t want to disturb him. I figured his moments of peace came even fewer and farther between than mine, and anyway, it seemed then like all the time in the world.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your continued patience, and I'm sorry this chapter has taken so long. On the bright side, there are definitely only two chapters left, and the last one is going to be something of an epilogue, so we're definitely getting there. :) Lord willing, I'll wrap this up by the end of the October!

Isle La Motte was like something out of a storybook, all winding lanes and old buildings and lush green trees, cut off from the mainland by a wide moat of slate blue water. Our little house was right on the lake, the back door only a few yards from the narrow beach. When Blanche threw open the back shutters, we could hear the gentle lapping of the waves, the chittering of the breeze through the leaves, and not much else. No cars, no voices, not even the bark of a dog. The nearest neighbors were at least a mile down the road—if they were even there at all and hadn’t fled south in the face of the impending winter. Mr. Greeley had warned us that it could get bitter cold out there on the lake, and if we stayed on that long we’d want to prepare accordingly—but winter seemed miles away that first evening, when the sun set behind the trees across the lake and turned the water golden, when Nix put on the radio and we listened as Sinatra’s crooning blended with the sound of the water.

We were all in high spirits then. The previous night had been nice and companionable, with Nix and I basking in afterglow and Blanche seemingly none the wiser but nevertheless positively affected by our good moods. We’d found a nice little diner in town and I’d sat with my arm slung behind Blanche on the booth just like I’d imagined, and Nix was pleased we were keeping up his ruse. It started to feel like a game to me after all, and Blanche seemed happy to play along if I was, though I did think I caught her looking between me and Nix like she was waiting for some new drama to unfold. None came though, and none came the next day as we packed up and drove over the bridge to the island, to our quaint little college on the lake. We unpacked, settled into our rooms, and then gravitated together again, pulled toward each other by the force of our contentment. I felt good enough to ask Blanche to dance to the duet of Sinatra and Lake Champlain. And Nix felt good enough to cut in after me, whirling her around and dipping her until she was breathless from laughing, begging him to stop but not even trying to pull away.

Later, after Blanche had her fill of revelry and went up to bed and Nix and I were alone again, he held out his hand to me.

“Dance with me, Red,” he said quietly, and I smiled as I let him pull me out of my chair and into his arms. He danced like he didn’t have a care in the world, like his sister wasn’t just upstairs. His hands rested so low on my waist they could hardly be said to be on my waist at all, and for the first time in a while, his breath didn’t smell of whiskey. I combed the hair at the back of his head with my fingers and looked past his shoulder out the window at the way the moonlight sparkled on the water. Everything felt alright. I thought maybe we were going to be alright. 

That night, I let him coax me into his bedroom instead of my own. “Don’t worry about Blanche,” he said. “She sleeps late.” And that sounded like decent logic when his mouth was brushing my neck and his hands were on the buttons of my shirt. 

We should have spoken more about what he’d told me. I’d almost tried to start the conversation up again that morning, but Nix had been whistling tunefully as he fixed his hair in the bathroom mirror, and I hadn’t wanted to ruin his good mood. I didn’t want to ruin it that night either, after we’d burned off our desire again and Nix was pressed up against me and I could feel his eyelashes fluttering against the skin of my shoulder. But I should have—I should have made him face his demons and reconcile with them. I should have seen how he had used passion to deflect me the previous night, and how if passion didn’t work he’d use sarcasm or humor or affection, anything to keep a lid on his self-loathing, to keep it hidden from me. And maybe there was a part of me that didn’t mind letting him. Maybe I didn’t _want_ to see.

“It’s too quiet here,” he said two days later when the three of us were again gathered in the sitting room, sprawled on the floor playing a Canasta. The windows were open and the radio was on, Abbott and Costello in the middle of some sketch that none of us could quite pay attention to. Sometimes I’d catch most of a punchline and chuckle reflexively, but Nix didn’t seem to be hearing anything at all—not the radio program, and not the snippets of conversation Blanche and I were lobbing back and forth. “I don’t understand how people can live in a place where it’s so goddamn quiet all the time.”

But it wasn’t quiet at all. The radio was going, and the lake was lapping at the shore outside our window, and the crickets were making a racket. 

“You’re too accustomed to city noise, Lew,” Blanche said as she frowned down at her cards. “Give it a few more days, and you’ll adjust.”

“I doubt it,” he said. “It’s worse at night. I can practically hear my own heartbeat.”

“You should try sleeping with the window open,” I suggested. In fact, the previous night we’d done just that, but Nix had been more agitated than usual, tossing and turning the whole night through. Every time I woke up and looked at him, there was that furrow between his brow, and it wouldn’t go away even if I reached out and smoothed my thumb across it.

Nix shot me a dark look. “Why, so someone can sneak in while we’re sleeping? We might as well just invite burglars in the front door.”

“You’re from New York City, Nix,” I said. “You’re worried about crime _here_?”

He wasn’t worried about burglary at all though, and when I glanced over at Blanche, I could tell she knew it too. We’d tried to flee from Nix’s demons, but here they were again, right in the room with us.

“I just mean that Packard out front might as well be a neon sign advertising that we’ve got money. Maybe we should trade it in for something less conspicuous.”

I frowned at him. “It doesn’t matter. Everyone already knows we’re here.”

He stiffened. His glass was sitting on top of the coffee table a few feet away, and I saw him glance at it as if deciding whether he’d loose too much face in lunging for it at that moment. Before he had a chance, Blanche let out a bored sigh, drawing his attention.

“It’s your go, Lewis,” she said. “Honestly, if you can’t pay attention—”

“I’m paying attention,” he grumbled, turning his attention back to his cards. The game went on, but there was a muscle in Nix’s jaw that kept jumping, and as soon as he had a chance, he lunged for his glass after all.

A few nights later, I had a nightmare. It wasn’t one of the usual ones, where everything was eerily quiet and lonely and the dread crept up on me slowly. No, this one was loud and violent, a confusion of gunfire and red smoke in the moonlight, muzzle flashes illuminating the faces of my men, my friends, their eyes wide with fear and their faces streaked with dirt and blood. I was running, but I wasn’t going anywhere. Something was holding onto my arm, holding me back, squeezing and shaking and—

“Dick!”

I woke with a start, sitting up suddenly and scared Blanche away from the side of the bed. Lewis’s bed, not my own, but Lewis wasn’t there. My t-shirt was stuck to my back with sweat, but I was glad I’d had the foresight to put it back on at all, just in case. But the way Blanche was looking at me, you’d think I was naked.

“Dick,” she said again, no less urgently. Like she was still trying to wake me up. I tried to shake the fog of the nightmare out of my brain, focusing on the gray dawn light outside the window. And that was when I realized that I hadn’t left the sound of gunfire behind in my dream. It was still there, though less frequent. A shot rang out, and my eyes snapped to Blanche’s face. Another shot, and I watched her flinch.

“Is he—?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a small voice, stepping closer like she wanted to reach out again. “I didn’t want to go down.”

I leapt out of bed and barely noticed as Blanche quickly turned her back to preserve my modesty. I pulled on my pants and grabbed my shirt and made for the door half at a run already. “Stay here,” I called over my shoulder, even though I doubted Blanche could have been coaxed down the stairs for anything then.

I found him on the back porch with a revolver in his hand, taking shots at a nearby tree. There was a glass with a scant quarter-inch of whiskey in it at his elbow, and the bottle was on the ground several inches from his foot, close enough for him to top off at his leisure. I imagined he had done so already, at least once. But regardless of his state of inebriation, he was hitting the tree every time, and the bark exploded into the air and fell to the ground like rain. I’d heard two shots in the bedroom, one more as I raced down the stairs, and I stood watching as he squeezed off two more, three more, and then a harmless click. When he flicked the cylinder open, I cautiously approached him from the side.

“What’d that tree ever do to you, huh?” I asked, keeping my voice light. The morning air was cooling the sweat on the back of my neck, making it prickle and itch, making me want to scratch. It had been a long time since I’d been near a man with a gun. 

“I didn’t like the way it was looking at me,” Nix said. The joke fell flat, and he noticed it, winced. “Just thought it was a good time to brush up on my target practice.”

“Why, are you planning on having to shoot something in the near future?”

“You never know,” he said. When he caught the way I was looking at him, he sighed—like I was the one who was being unreasonable. “Don’t. I’m just getting cabin fever, is all. All this silence makes me claustrophobic.”

Anyone else might have put on the radio or gone for a walk, I thought. I eyed the gun, which was hanging limply from his hand now. There was a little mountain of bullets next to his elbow. “Why did you bring that with you, Nix?” I asked.

He looked down and narrowed his eyes, as if seeing the gun for the first time. “I didn’t know what kind of animals they might have out here in the sticks,” he said. “Maybe I’d need to save us all from a pack of wolves.”

A pack of wolves, sure. I didn’t think he was worried about a pack of any kind of animal, unless you counted people as animals. So much for coming to Vermont to escape. But I guess that’s the trouble. You can run away from places, you can let time pass, but you can never get away from yourself. 

“Someone may hear the gunshots and call the police,” I said. “You don’t want to draw that kind of attention, do you?”

The corner of his mouth twitched, and he looked at me with a glint of admiration in his eye, making it clear he saw right through my attempts at manipulation. Still, he clicked the cylinder shut again and set the gun down on the railing. “No, I guess I don’t.”

I should have picked it up and pocketed it, but just looking at it gleaming dully in the early morning light was making my skin crawl. It had been a long time since I’d been near a man with a gun, but it’d been longer since I’d held one myself. Some small, irrational part of me wondered if I could even touch it without thinking about pointing it at someone—if it would come back to me that quick. I’d never relished killing, not even in self-defense, not even in defense of others, but maybe it was something you couldn’t rid yourself of. Maybe it was like blood in the water, and it I just had to get a whiff before the I was overtaken by some baser animal instinct. 

“Why don’t you come back to bed?” I said, stepping closer to put a hand on his arm instead. When he didn’t flinch away from that, I shifted my grip to his waist and pulled him close, resting my forehead against his temple. He smelled so familiar, like sweat and gunpowder and whiskey. If I closed my eyes and concentrated, I could imagine we’d survived years together, survived a war side by side. And this, just one more battle.

“You won’t sleep anymore,” he said. “And I don’t—”

“I’ll lay with you.”

I thought maybe I could coax him inside and he’d forget about the gun, but instead he twisted out of my grip enough to pick it up again and shove it into his waistband, then pocket the shells as well. To my dismay, he also tossed back the rest of the whiskey. But after that he let me take him by the hand, pull him close again, wrap my arm around him. Together, we went back inside.

I hoped Blanche had gone back to her room, or at least had made her way to the kitchen to get breakfast started. I hoped she wouldn’t confront us and set Nix off. Nix seemed to be thinking the same thing, because as I led him through the back door, his eyes darted around like he was expecting her to jump out at us from some hidden corner or leap out from behind the furniture. But I managed to get him up the stairs and back into bed without incident, and then I curled myself around him and waited until his breathing lengthened into sleep. 

When I was sure I was out, I got up carefully and left the room. I was halfway down the stairs when Blanche came out of the kitchen to meet me, wrapped in robe, her eyes downcast.

“Is he alright?” she asked when I reached the bottom step.

“He’ll be fine,” I said, and tried very hard to sound like I meant it.

There was a long pause, and I knew what she was going to say next before she looked up at me and said it, no beating around the bush. “So you’re sleeping with him then.”

“Yes,” I said. What else could I say? She’d caught me. Caught us.

She took a deep, shuddering breath and reached out to steady herself on the banister. I took a step toward her, then thought better of it and stilled, not wanting to press my luck. It seemed like ages passed before she spoke again.

“Good,” she said. “I’m glad.” Now she was the one whose voice lacked the proper conviction, but that didn’t stop me from feeling relieved. Briefly relieved. “I’m glad,” she repeated, “but you understand, I have to leave now.”

“What?” I said, scrambling to keep up with her logic. “Why?”

“You think I want to play chaperone to my brother and his lover? My brother who’s…who’s…lost his _mind_.” 

“Blanche—”

“Don’t,” she said, jerking away even though I hadn’t tried to touch her. “I haven’t been able to get through to him, in all my trying, but you have, a little. So maybe if I go away and leave you two alone, things will sort themselves out. Maybe if he doesn’t feel like he has to hide…”

“We’ve barely been here a week. He’s still adjusting.”

“He has a gun, Dick,” she said, her voice rising. “He was shooting at a tree.”

I lifted my hands in surrender, worried she’d wake Nix again if she got any more distraught. Maybe if I changed tactics. “He’ll be worried about how it looks,” I said. “Two men alone out here.”

She waved her hand and turned away from me. “You can tell people your wife is visiting her family, if you even see any people at all. Have we seen another living soul on this island since we got here?”

We hadn’t—not really. One morning I’d gone out for a swim and saw in the distance a man in a rowboat, but he was too far away to call out to, and I couldn’t tell if he lived nearby or across the lake. We hadn’t yet had a reason to go to the general store in town, since we’d stocked up on groceries in Alburgh, but I somehow doubted a quick trip to the store was going to lead to any long conversations with the locals. There was something about the island. You could tell it wasn’t a particularly warm community. Maybe it was because people came and went with the seasons, mostly failing to put down roots, or maybe an island was just attractive to people who craved isolation. Whatever the case, the welcome wagon hadn’t shown up for us so far, and I didn’t expect it to.

“I still don’t think he’ll like it,” I said.

“He’ll live. And…and anyway, I need a break. I deserve one.”

Her voice was trembling and thick with emotion, and I finally gave in to the urge to put a hand on he shoulder. She tensed, like she wanted to shrug it off, but after a moment she sagged against me, allowing herself a moment of weakness. I thought she deserved that too—to be weak. She had been strong for so long.

“You’re right,” I said. “If you want to go back to New York, I’ll keep an eye on things here.”

“I know it’s not your responsibility…”

She half turned her face into my chest. I smoothed a hand over her hair, but I wasn’t sure what to say. If it wasn’t my responsibility, whose was it? Hers? Her parents’? The Army’s? The whole country’s? I didn’t know who should take responsibility for Nix, but I knew we were the ones who cared and the ones who were left to pick up the pieces. 

“We’ll probably be back in the city in a few days anyway,” I said at last. “He doesn’t seem to like it here.”

“Maybe he’ll like it better without me,” she said ruefully.

But as I predicted, Nix wasn’t happy when Blanche told him she was leaving. He came downstairs a couple hours later, bleary-eyed and grouchy, and by then Blanche had packed and her bags were by the door and she was just waiting to ambush him with the news. I hid in my room while they hashed it out, but I could hear their voices climb higher and higher, years worth of pain coloring the edges of each word. They knew how to hit each other where it hurt. She was abandoning him. He was drinking himself to death. She would be sorry when he never spoke to her again. He had trapped her in a cage for long enough.

I waited until it died down to a dull roar to go back down the steps. Nix wasn’t going to want to take her to the train station, I could tell—and while I was upstairs, I had thought of something I wanted to say to Blanche. Something I wanted to ask her.

“I guess you’re in on this,” Nix spat at me when I appeared in the kitchen. I shot him an apologetic look, but he didn’t seem to want to see it. He brushed past me, knocking our shoulders together and ignoring the way Blanche called after him, telling him to wait, telling him she was sorry.

“He’ll come around,” I said once we were alone. It made sense. He’d lost people, and it had made him scared. Blanche knew more of his secrets now, and to him it had to look like she was running away from him. But once he realized she only needed a little space and wasn’t abandoning him for good, he’d be fine. I was sure of it. Pretty sure.

Blanche and I road to the train station in Burlington in silence, but once I pulled up to the curb to let her out, I took her by the elbow to keep her from darting off and bent my head toward hers to ask her what I wanted to ask her. It was a favor, something I wanted her to do when she got back to the city. Something that would put both our minds at ease if it turned out how I hoped it would. Her eyes widened, and for a moment I thought she was going to turn me down, but she was made of stronger stuff than that. She nodded, putting her hand over mine and giving it a squeeze.

“I can do that,” she said. “I’ll call you as soon as I can. Three days at most.”

Three days. I could wait three more days.

I thought that night about waiting until Nix was asleep and then taking the gun away. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself pitching it into the lake, saw it somersaulting through the air, the moonlight glinting off the metal before it hit with a quiet plunk and sunk beneath the water. One less gun in the world wouldn’t be such a bad thing. But though I lay awake for hours imagining it, I couldn’t follow through. He’d know who took it, and he’d be angry with me for it, and that was the last thing I wanted. He’d already spent most of the afternoon giving me the cold shoulder in retaliation for letting Blanche leave, and being on the outs with him made me feel unaccountably lonely. Lonely, and perhaps a little scared. His unhappiness seemed more dangerous now that I knew he had that gun.

The morning after Blanche left, I got up and made breakfast, hoping it would smooth things over a little. I waited until I heard Nix up and moving around to start it, and he came downstairs, barefoot and damp-haired, just as I was putting plates of eggs and bacon and toast on the table. He paused in the doorway and looked from the food to me and back again, his jaw working as he seemed to try to figure out how mad he should be. When the corner of his mouth twitched, my heart leapt in my chest.

“Well,” he said, “I guess I could get used to this.”

_It’s probably not as good as Blanche’s cooking,_ I almost said, but then I thought better of mentioning her just then. And I was forestalled anyway, because Nix came over and cupped his hand under my chin and kissed me on the mouth.

“I guess I could get used to that too,” he said, grinning as he pulled away. And I should have been unsettled then by how his moods could turn on a dime, but he had the power to turn my mood around just as quickly. 

I had been hoping that once the sweet freedom of being alone set in, it would coax him out of his rotten mood, and I was not wholly disappointed. After breakfast, he asked me to go for a swim with him—a swim that quickly turned into something a lot less wholesome. When Blanche had been around, the most he would do was come sit on the end of the pier and watch me while he nursed his coffee, but now he stripped down without preamble and even left off complaining about how cold it was after only a few minutes. He was a fine sight with his dark hair dripping water onto his cheeks, his shoulders shining and pebbling with gooseflesh. He laughed when he caught me watching too closely.

“This is nice,” he said as he pushed me up against one of the pilings at the end of the pier, his lips millimeters from mine and his fingers tracing the waistband of my shorts. 

“What is?” I asked, trying and failing to meet his eyes.

“Not having to worry about getting caught.”

We were out in the open, under a clear blue sky, but he was right. There was no one around to catch us. No one to worry about, and nothing. With his legs sliding slickly against mine and his mouth hot on my neck, I could close my eyes and forget about the incident with the gun and every other troubling thing that had led us to that moment, because none of it mattered. He had a way of doing that. Of making me forget. If I’d had a clearer head, that might have alarmed me, but all it did was make me wish again and again that we’d known each other sooner. I thought he could have turned that smile on me in Normandy or Bastogne and made the whole war fade away for a while. It was like it had been made to soothe me.

It was hard to tell if he felt the same way about me.

The next two days passed slowly, in a haze. I kept waiting for the phone to ring, and each silent moment seemed to stretch out longer than the next. Nix spent a lot of time reading, and while I tried to do the same, I couldn’t focus on the words. I tried to write letters to my family, and to Harry, but that didn’t work well either. It was hard to explain what I was doing in Vermont and how I was keeping myself occupied. It was hard to explain that I wasn’t staying occupied at all.

The idleness felt like the most difficult part. I had never liked sitting still, and it was even more difficult when I was waiting for news from Blanche. If it had been my own house, I would have busied myself making minor repairs. The gutters needed cleaning. The shutters could have used a fresh coat of paint. There was a loose board out on the pier. I cataloged all the minor jobs in my mind and decided that, when Blanche called and confirmed that I was worried for nothing, I would pay a visit to Greeley and see if I could do some work in exchange for a discount on rent. Then at least I would be earning my keep a little bit. Maybe I could even get Nix to help out. Keeping busy could be good for both of us.

In the meantime, keeping busy translated into taking advantage of our aloneness in increasingly indecent ways. On the second day, he coaxed me down onto the rug in the living room. On the third day, he dropped to his knees on the kitchen tile after breakfast. And when I suggested going for a drive at dusk, he reached into my lap as we were going around a bend and almost ran us off the road. I parked us near a rocky swath of beach and let him get my pants open—and the whole time I wondered why I wasn’t more worried about getting caught. Why _he_ wasn’t more worried about getting caught. He could swing between paranoid and bold so quickly it gave me whiplash if I thought about it too hard. But I never thought about it too hard. 

“We should go back,” I said as he wrapped his fingers around me and dropped his forehead shoulder. I felt like a teenager, trying to avoid trouble when every part of me wanted the temptation that was laid out in front of me. 

“Shh,” he said. “We can go in a little bit.”

“Lewis.” I’d meant it to sound scolding, but it came out as a gasp, and he knew he had me then. He laughed darkly into my neck, and his hand sped up, and all I could do was dig my fingers into my thighs and listen hard for cars. 

The phone was ringing when we made it back to the house. It took everything in me not to sprint for it. 

“That’s probably your sister,” I said, and took my time unwinding my scarf while Nix went to answer it. 

Sure enough, after picking up the receiver and listening for a moment, he smiled and said, “I guess you made it back alright then.” I forced myself to walk into the room so I didn’t hover. I fiddled with the radio, sat down and stood up again, shelved one of the books that Nix had finished reading the previous day, and tried hard not to listen too hard to the bits of conversation that filtered in from the hall. Just small talk, it sounded like. Nix was speaking low and laughing every now and then. He sounded calm. Normal. I sat down again and drummed my fingers on my thigh, waiting, waiting for what seemed like an eternity. 

When Nix called my name, I jumped to my feet and barely managed not to run into the hall.

“She wants to talk to you,” he said, raising his eyebrows at me and letting the receiver dangle from one finger. “I guess she doesn’t believe me when I say I’m doing fine. Has to hear it from you instead.”

I rolled my eyes at him and forced a smile. “Or she could just want to say hello.”

I took it from him and put it to my ear, but I waited until he had walked away toward the living room before breathing a quiet greeting down the line.

“Dick,” Blanche said breathlessly, “I did what you said.”

“And?” I asked.

“I found the place, and I talked to that doorman. And….and he said no one had been in asking about Lewis.”

I let out a breath and sagged against the wall. “Well, good. That’s good.”

But something was wrong. Her voice had sounded tight, and she made an impatient sound at my relief. “No, you don’t understand. He said no one had _ever_ been in asking about Lewis.”

My stomach lurched. I was misunderstanding her, I thought. I had to be. “What?”

“I even went in to talk to the bartender too, just to be sure. I gave them both the descriptions you told me. The doorman remembered the men, but he said none of them were named Stryker, and…”

Her breath hitched, and mine did too. I looked toward the living room, where I could hear Nix moving around, turning up the radio, the clink of glasses as he poured himself his customary pre-dinner drink. If that was true, if the men who had come in that night weren’t who he said they were, and if they had never asked after his whereabouts— 

“Dick,” Blanche said in my ear, her voice almost a whisper. “Why would he make all of that up?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t have any idea.


	8. Chapter 8

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. How could the men in Nix’s division have found him in the vast expanse of New York City? How could they have waltzed into that exact club on that exact night, by coincidence alone? And why hunt him down and reopen old wounds three years after the fact? I guess I was so eager for an explanation for his erratic behavior that I’d been happy to swallow the one he fed me without a second thought. I was hungry for the source of the problem, because if I had a source, I could find a solution, but now that solution seemed farther away than ever before. 

I wanted to confront him. I almost confronted him as soon as I said goodbye to Blanche, but something stopped me. I walked into the living room and opened my mouth to let the accusation roll out, but he looked up at me and grinned, asked if I’d satisfied his sister that I’d be an adequate caretaker, and I found myself rolling my eyes and fighting a smile instead. I’d do it the next day, I thought. It was getting late, and there was dinner to think about. He was in a good mood and I didn’t want to sour it. 

But I didn’t do it the next day either—though not for lack of trying. I came in from my morning swim to find Nix sprawled flat on the couch with a book propped on his chest. He looked up at me, watching me towel my hair with a look in his eye I’d come to recognize as hunger. I couldn’t let him look at me like that without saying something.

“So, I was thinking,” I said carefully, and all at once it was like someone drew the curtains closed behind his eyes. I plowed on. “How long do you think we’re going to be up here?”

“Why, getting tired of me already?” he said, sitting up slowly and forcing a grin that was all bravado.

“Of course not,” I said. “I just wondered if you had some idea. If we’re going to be here a while, I’m thinking about doing a little work on this place.”

“It needs work?” He looked around the room skeptically

“The shutters could use a fresh coat of paint. The gutters need cleaning before the snow comes.” I walked over and took a seat next to him on the couch. “But it’s probably not worth doing if we’re only going to be here another week or two.”

Nix just looked at me for a while, and then he realized what I was asking and his expression darkened. “You want to know when I’m gonna get over it, is that it?”

“No, that’s not—” I cut myself off and started over, gentler this time, more careful. “I just mean…how long do you think it’ll take for them to get tired of looking for you?”

“No one’s keeping you here, Dick,” he said, his hands gripping his knees in agitation.

“Come on. That’s not what I mean.”

“Isn’t it?” He sprang to his feet and took a couple steps toward the cabinet where I knew he’d stashed a few bottles of that good old Vat 69, and I was almost overcome by the urge to stand up and grab him and tell him to cut it out. The force of my frustration surprised me. 

“If I didn’t want to be here with you I wouldn’t be,” I said as calmly as I was able. 

He hesitated a moment, then continued his walk toward the liquor cabinet. This time I did spring to my feet. I gripped his shoulder and turned him back toward me and put my other hand to his face, to make him look me in the eye and see that I was telling the truth. 

“I want to be here, Lewis,” I repeated.

His hands came up to grip the ends of the towel around my neck, and he moved in until the buttons of his shirt were pressing cold points against my bare skin. “Oh yeah?” he said hoarsely. “Prove it.”

He could be slippery when he wanted to be. It wasn’t until later, when I coaxed him out of bed and into the shower to get cleaned up, that I realized he’d managed to distract me again from the thing we were supposed to be talking about. And it was too late then. I didn’t want to start the fight all over. I’d try again the next day. But, of course, I _didn’t_ try again the next day. There was always some excuse.

I was angry, but in an absent-minded way; I had to look at the wound head-on to feel the pain of it, so I chose not to look at all. It was too much to think I’d been duped into caring for him, leaving New York for him, sticking my neck out for him. I’d always thought myself a good judge of character, and I wasn’t ready to confront the idea that maybe I had blind spots after all. There had to have been some misunderstanding. There’d been a different doorman at the club the night Nix got spooked, or the staff’s memories had faded in the nearly two weeks since we fled to Vermont. It was a serious thing to accuse someone of being a liar. Did I really want to do it on such little evidence?

The decision was taken out of my hands in the end, for better or for worse. I was patient—I could have waited out my disquiet until Nix’s natural charm overcame it—but Blanche was a different story. She stewed for two more days, waiting for me to call her back and tell her the score, and when I didn’t call, she went over my head.

I’d given in to my restlessness at that point, and though I hadn’t had a chance yet to talk to Mr. Greeley, I’d taken it upon myself to clean out the gutters. Fall was coming on fast—the trees were showing more red and yellow every day—and I was convinced at the rate we were going we’d be staying at that house on the lake long enough to see it arrive in full force. In a little boathouse down by the dock, I’d found a ladder and some garden gloves. Those gutters provided me with a surmountable problem. With each handful of dead leaves and sludge, I could see my progress. I knew I was accomplishing something. I knew what the result would be. It was peaceful, and I was greedy for a little peace.

It was late afternoon when Nix came storming out of the house. The sun was sitting on the backs of the trees across the lake, making the water shine like gold. The air was crisp but not cold enough to keep sweat off the back of my neck. If things hadn’t gone to hell, it would have been a nice night to sit on the back porch while we ate dinner and enjoy the mild weather while we still could. I’d been so absorbed with my task and with imagining a quiet, stress-free night that I hadn’t heard the phone ring, but I heard it when the screen door whacked against the side of the house, and when I looked down over my shoulder and saw Nix storm down off the porch, I was pretty sure I knew what had set him off. 

“So you think I’m a liar, huh?” he said as he came to a stop at the base of the ladder. I almost laughed at the sudden and unexpected drama of it, even as my stomach sank. He had a right to be mad, so I shouldn’t have begrudged him his histrionics, but it felt ridiculous. Like something that couldn’t possibly be happening to me. 

“I don’t think you’re a liar,” I said, and started climbing down to meet him.

“Bullshit.” When my feet touched the grass, I saw he was clenching his fists so hard his knuckles were white. I wondered, in a detached sort of way, whether he was thinking about hitting me. “You were suspicious enough to send my sister someplace she never should have been—”

“I think Blanche can take care of herself,” I said. My hackles were going up in spite of myself, days worth of stifled anger welling up to the surface. 

“Oh, you think so, huh?” he spat. “What makes you the expert?”

“If she didn’t want to do it, she wouldn’t have done it,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I wasn’t the only one worried about you.”

“And heaven fucking forbid you talk to _me_ , instead of plotting and scheming. Is that why Blanche really left? Did you talk her into it?”

I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from spitting out something nasty. She left because she was scared. She left because at last she could do it without burdening her conscience. She loved him—beyond all doubt, I was sure she loved him—but loving him wasn’t easy. Or maybe loving him was too easy, and it was everything that came with it that was hard.

“You’re right,” I said, refusing to answer his question for fear it’d drag us both deeper into our anger. “We should have just talked to you.”

He stared me down, his hands still balled up at his sides. “I guess you want to leave too now, since you’re convinced I made the whole thing up.”

“I don’t want to go.” I felt like I’d been repeating those words endlessly. How many times did I have to say it? Would he ever believe it? “I just want to know the truth.”

“The truth is what I told you.” He said it with so much conviction, enough to make me falter. I wanted so badly to be able to take him at his word.

“Then why would Blanche have heard something different?”

Nix threw up his hands. “Fuck if I know, Dick. Maybe they didn’t want to scare her. Maybe they didn’t believe she was really my sister and were trying to protect my privacy. Maybe…maybe _Blanche_ is the one lying, just to get me to come home.”

I gaped at him, the back of my neck pebbling with gooseflesh. I wouldn’t have expected him to turn on her so easily, and now I wondered how his conversation with her left off, whether she was sad or angry with him or angry with me or all of that at once. “You don’t really think she would do that.”

“She was bound to get tired of me inconveniencing her sooner or later.”

Suddenly the evening felt too chilly after all. I tensed to stifle a shudder, wishing that Blanche hadn’t left. Wishing I’d never sent her on such a foolish errand. I should have known there was no way it could end well, no matter what news she relayed to me. I felt sure she wasn’t lying, but where did that leave us? Now Nix was more upset than ever, and I had no idea how to diffuse it. 

“You’re not an inconvenience,” I said, though it felt inadequate. Nix must have found it inadequate too, because he snorted at me and half-turned away, like he had to reject my words with his entire body. 

I wish I would have had the words to say what I meant and make him believe it. I thought back to one Christmas when I was a teenager, when my sister had received a hand-carved puzzle box from our grandfather. After struggling for days, she gave up on opening it herself and had come to me for help. Nix reminded me of that. Every time one piece slid into place, there was another one to worry at, and sometimes working on the second would undo the progress on the first. There was no way to know what would happen once you got the thing open, but you knew it would be a treat if you just kept at it. I had the patience to keep at it, if he would let me. He wasn’t easy—I can’t say that—but difficult isn’t the same as unwanted.

So I’d wait. I turned my back on him and went to lay the ladder down in the grass, so the wind wouldn’t blow it over in the night. I took off the gloves and stepped past him and went up the porch steps and into the house. The screen door banged shut behind me, and it didn’t open again. When I glanced out the window, I saw Nix standing there with his back still turned, his hands on his hips, looking out at the lake. If only I could see into his head, I thought. Or if he could see into mine.

I went upstairs, hoping that we’d both cool off in the time it took me to wash up. My arms were covered in dirt from wrist to elbow, so I stopped off in the bathroom to rinse them in the sink. I lathered up with soap and scrubbed until my skin was pink and raw and the grime was gone from under my fingernails. Then I splashed water on my face and pushed my fingers back through my hair and looked up to see Nix standing in the bathroom doorway. Our eyes met in the mirror.

“I’m not a liar,” he said as soon as I turned off the tap. 

“Okay,” I said softly, even though I wasn’t convinced. He’d dug himself a hole, I thought, and all he could do was dig deeper—but I wasn’t unsympathetic.

He looked away and ground his teeth, and then his eyes flicked back to mine. “I don’t want you to go.”

I waited, sensing he’d say more.

“It doesn’t feel so bad with you.” He looked down at the floor and gestured to his own head. “You make it all…quieter.”

Quieter, but not quiet. I should have taken more notice of that choice of word, but even if I had, I wouldn’t have known how to help him. All I heard was that I was helping _some_ , and that was enough for me at the time. Suddenly I didn’t care if he had lied to me or been entirely truthful or something in between. What did it matter? There was a noise he couldn’t drown out, and either it came from inside his head or outside, but the important part was that he needed me and I needed him just as much. That was the crux of it: I needed him too. 

“Lewis,” I said, stepping forward to take him by the elbows. He gripped my arms and watched me with heartbreaking hope. “I want to stay with you. Here or in New York or wherever you want to go. I’m not looking for a way out.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you should be.”

I shook my head, and he sighed and put his head down my shoulder. He felt so fragile to me then, like he might crumple if I gripped him too hard. Fragile like glass, fragile like paper.

Except he wasn’t either of those; he wasn’t harmless. He was fragile like a bomb.

The rest of that night is so vivid in my memory that I can close my eyes and play it out like a movie. I held him and murmured comfort into his ear until he was recovered enough to be embarrassed by the treatment and pushed me away, declaring that he should make dinner and I should shower. I took his advice, and then we ate out on the back porch like I’d wanted, watching as the light turned bright gold and then red and then blue before disappearing altogether. We went back inside just as the stars were coming out, and then went upstairs again and made love with the windows thrown wide open. Each time Nix cried out, my heart leapt, even though there was no one around to hear us. And I remember wishing, in the middle of it all, that there _was_ someone around to hear, because I felt pride at how I could make him loud with pleasure if only for a short time. 

Like a fool, I thought it was all over. I thought once again that things would get better just because I decided they could, or because it was easy for me to sweep all the ugliness under the rug. Nix pressed against my side with his head on my chest, and it felt right, it felt good, and nothing else mattered. 

I was dozing when we heard the sound of the car coming down the road. Half asleep, the distant rumble of the engine didn’t register as alarming, and neither did the loss of heat that came from Nix stirring and getting out of bed. If I had any thoughts at all, I might have thought he would go downstairs and pour himself another glass of scotch, or maybe get a book to read in bed. By the time the car came close enough for the headlights to cast shadows across the ceiling, it was too late. I couldn’t stop it.

“Nix?” I called as I sat up, drowsy and disoriented. “Is someone—”

Before I could finish speaking, my voice froze in my throat, my blood turning to slush in my veins. Nix’s sock drawer was gaping—the drawer where I knew he kept the revolver. Socks had spilled over onto the floor. I didn’t need to stand up and go over to know that the gun wouldn’t be there. It would be downstairs, in Nix’s hand.

“Nix!” I yelled again, more urgently, as I sprang out of bed. It felt like it took ages to pick my clothes up off the floor. My shirt was only halfway buttoned as I rushed out of the room and to the stairs, my bare feet pounding the hardwood, my breath loud in my own ears. It was clear as soon as I got to the bottom of the steps that a car had stopped in the drive outside. Its headlights shown through the front windows, casting everything in an eerie golden glow that raised the hair on the back of my arms. My mind switched into combat mode automatically, my shoulders tensing and my hands flexing as I wished I had a gun too, or anything at all that I could use to fight off what was coming.

Nix was standing in the open doorway, framed in a rectangle of yellow light. He was nothing but a dark shape, a black shadow of a man, one arm extended in front of him.

I heard the creak of a car door opening. I heard Nix shout something, but I couldn’t make out the words over the pounding in my head.

Two shots rang out. Only two, but the noise reverberated between the trees and across all that empty space and made it sound like twenty.

There was no cry, no moan, not even the slightest hint that someone had been hit, but I could tell from the way Nix slumped against the door and let the gun fall back to his side that he hadn’t missed his mark. Time slowed and stretched. I’m not sure how long I stood there, staring at the back of his head, willing myself to wake up. It was all a dream. I was still asleep. It was the only thing that made sense. 

But then he turned and looked at me, and I could see his expression, drawn with anguish, and I snapped out of it. I took one step and then another and then I was brushing past him and half-sprinting, half-skidding down the gravel drive.

Mr. Greeley had probably come to check on the house, to make sure we’d settled in okay. What possessed him to drive out after dark, I guess I’ll never know. Maybe he was making the rounds and get held up at the house before ours, where some kind housewife had forced him to stay for dinner and maybe a drink after that. Maybe he had come by earlier, when Nix and I were out back and couldn’t hear the doorbell, so he decided to go and come back. Whatever the case, he couldn’t have known it would end up like this. No one could have.

No, that’s not the truth. I could have known. I should have.

I didn’t have to check his pulse to know he was dead. One of the lenses in his half-moon spectacles had become a forest of fractures that radiated outward from a little round hole. I gingerly pushed the glasses aside to confirm that the bullet had indeed gone right through them. He probably had died instantly, and if he hadn’t, the second bullet, which tore through his throat, would have done it. Blood fanned out under his head, coating the gravel underneath him, giving him a halo of black in the moonlight.

“Dick.”

The voice came from the front porch, and it was so small and grief-stricken that I didn’t recognize it as Nix’s at first. It took him saying my name again before I stood up and turned around, blinking slow and breathing hard. 

“Is he…?”

“He’s dead,” I said.

Nix sat down hard on the first step, the gun flopping uselessly in his lap. I’d seen the expression on his face a hundred times, only not on him. On young men who’d just shot their first German, or their twentieth German, or their hundredth German. He stared unseeing into the middle distance, rubbing his hand absently over his jaw, which was clenched so tight I though his teeth might crack. I stood there by Greeley—the corpse that once had been Greeley—and tried to get a handle on myself and the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I walked past him and into the house, and he didn’t try to stop me. If I didn’t call right away, I knew I’d be tempted not to call at all. That conversation is the only part of the night I can’t remember—not what I said and not what the voice on the other end of the line said. I don’t even know if that voice gave me permission to hang up, but after I gave the address, I hung up anyway. I couldn’t leave Nix out there alone.

“Lewis,” I said as I stepped out onto the front porch again, needing him to look at me and acknowledge the reality of the situation in some way. I expected to have to call his name again, but he turned and looked up at me right away, his expression going slack with despair.

“I thought it was them,” he said. “I thought they’d—”

It was then I knew—he hadn’t lied to me at all. He’d never lied to me. It was all real to him. 

“Dick, I…I…” He looked down at his lap. The gun glinted in the moonlight, and I saw his fingers tighten around it, and panic bubbled up inside me, setting me in motion. I made it to his side in what felt like no time at all and bent to set my hand over his, then eased the gun from his grip. He fought me for a second and then, mercifully, let it go, his hand falling limply back to his side. My hands shook as I hooked it in my back pocket. 

“It’s alright,” I said, going down the front steps so I could kneel in front of him. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “It’ll be alright.”

When I put his hands on his shoulders, he sagged against me at once, like staying upright as long as he did had been almost too much for him. I grabbed a handful of his shirt and pushed his face into my shoulder and held him tight, tighter, trying to stop his trembling. He quaked against me until red and blue lights flashed across the dark sky, until another set of headlights turned up our drive. Then, with a ragged gasp, he pushed me away and got shakily to his feet. Whether he was ready or not, his fate was coming to meet him.

He nudged me aside and stepped down off the porch, and as we heard the gravel crunch under the policemen’s tires, he turned back to look at me with a rueful grin, his eyes so wide I could see white all the way around. “I guess,” he said, his voice cracking. “I guess you can’t go wherever I go after all.”


	9. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I set out to write this story, I intended to end it with the previous chapter, so I feel like I should disclaim the epilogue a little bit. To me, the end of Chapter 8 is the end of a complete story, but as I was writing and thinking about it, it was inevitable for me to imagine what would have happened after that point. There are many things that _could_ have happened, but for some reason, in this case, I felt compelled to write down the thing I felt was most likely. Maybe for some of you, this will soften the blow of the previous chapter a little bit, but I should say that I don't intend for this to put a bow on things at all. There are still so many ways their future lives could go, but at least in the short term, this is what happened.

It was raining, a light fall drizzle, the day Nix was released from Auburn. When he’d been sentenced, I could hardly believe that he’d be out again so soon—only a year for the war hero with the best lawyer Stanhope Nixon’s money could buy—but as I stood there watching the buses pull in and out of the station one by one, it felt like he’d been locked up for ten.

Nix’s lawyer had been a magician in the courtroom. Without breaking a sweat, he sold the jury on the idea that it was a bad idea to drive up to someone’s house under cover of darkness, and that a man who could still hear planes exploding inside his head maybe deserved a little leniency. It was a good argument, I thought. A fair argument. But that didn’t change the fact that a man was dead. 

Nix himself didn’t believe he deserved leniency though. He didn’t say as much, but he didn’t need to. He’d only written me a few times in the twelve months he’d been in prison, and he’d told me if I came to visit, he’d refuse to see me. So I didn’t visit. I hadn’t seen in his face since we were in that courtroom together, me on the stand and him slouched beside his lawyer, looking weary and downcast. We hadn’t spoken privately since that night when he walked away from me into the darkness. That small handful of letters was all I had from him, and those weren’t exactly warm.

 _Sometimes I think about you meeting a woman—she is always blond in my mind—and settling down, buying a little farm back in Quaker Country and popping out a few brats,_ he’d written in one of them, the words scrawled across the page in sloppy, unpracticed handwriting. That’s the life I would pick for you, if I had my way. So if you are entertaining any foolish notions of waiting for me, please put them out of your mind. Whatever was between us was doomed from the start. I’m going to get out of here and go as far away from you as I can get, so I don’t screw up any more of your life like I’ve screwed up everyone else’s, including my own.

I ignored him, of course. I wrote him once a week, regardless of whether he answered or not. And that day, the day he was to come home, I was standing right there in that bus station, Blanche holding tightly to my elbow and resting her temple against my shoulder.

“You’re sure you want to be there?” Blanche had asked me when I’d phoned a week prior to confirm the date. “He may get angry. And Dick, you don’t—”

“Please don’t say I don’t owe him anything,” I said. He’d told me as much himself, and I hated to hear it. What I felt for him had nothing to do with debt, and every time I heard it put in those terms, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was all it was for him.

“Well,” Blanche sighed, “I guess I can’t stop you.”

But I knew she was glad I came from the way she clung to me. We were tucked up under an awning, listening to the hush of tired on the wet pavement, watching droves of strangers move past us to hug loved ones to call a taxi and go out into the world. And then, finally, it was Nix’s bus, and I knew I wasn’t ready.

He was much thinner. The suit he’d left the courtroom in was swallowing him up now, and there were too many shadows in his face—under his eyes, in the hollow of his cheeks. He didn’t have a hat, and steady spit of rain had started to make his hair curl at the ends by the time he made his way over to us. I couldn’t discern any particular emotion in his face. Not anger, but certainly not happiness either. He was all blank. My heart beat at my ribs like a wild, caged bird, but his blankness kept the smile from my face.

“Well, aren’t you two a picture,” he said blandly, stopping in front of us and shoving his hands deep into his pockets. 

His closed-off body language didn’t keep Blanche from letting go of me and flinging her arms around him, burying her face in his neck. I was shocked Nix could endure the force of her affection without returning it in the slightest. His hands didn’t leave his pockets. His face might have softened fractionally, but it was hard to tell in the gloom caused by the clouds and the rain.

“I know you didn’t want me here,” I said, desperate to fill the awkwardness with something. Blanche wouldn’t give up her clinging. I felt like everyone had to be looking at us, the strange picture the three of us made.

Then Nix’s expression did soften, just a little. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t think you would listen.” One hand came out and rested in the small of Blanche’s back, and he tucked his chin to bring his mouth near her ear. “Alright, honey,” he said. “That’s enough now.”

“It’s enough when I say it is.” Her voice was muffled, but I could tell she was crying. Nix wisely didn’t try to nudge her away.

I didn’t know what to say to him. That I’d missed him? I had, far more than I could have expected. That I was glad to see him? I was, but I was sad too, because of the time he lost and because of the way he looked standing before me, like all the warmth had drained right out of him and left only cold, crumbling coals. There was nothing that I could say that would encompass how I felt, so I stood there silently, holding his gaze for what seemed like forever. He never looked away.

“Alright,” Blanche said at last, letting her arms slide away from his neck and stepping back, dabbing at her eyes with the side of one hand. Nix’s collar was dotted with lipstick and spots of moisture. “Let’s get you home.”

Nix didn’t look at her but kept staring at me, his eyes narrowed as if he was waiting for something. He knew I’d built something of a life in the time he’d been away. I’d written him about the little house I’d bought in Wilkes Barre and the managing position I’d taken at the ironworks. He knew also that there was no blond woman and no kids, and that neither would be forthcoming. I went to Harry and Kitty’s every Sunday for dinner, and even they had stopped asking me. There had been one date with a woman from church, but the whole thing felt wrong enough that even she caught on and didn’t bother to ask when she’d see me again. It made me feel like a heel, but there was nothing I could do. I was tangled up in Nix for better or for worse. There was a good change the previous fourteen months would play out the exact same way over and over for the rest of my life, but I didn’t care.

Finally Nix glanced at Blanche, then nodded in my direction. “And what do we do with this stray pup?” he said, as if between the two of us he wasn’t the one who looked like he needed someone to take him in.

“You can keep him if you want,” Blanche said indulgently. “If you promise to take care of him.”

Nix’s dark face darkened further, his lips pressing into a thin line. “Not sure I can promise that.”

“Maybe we should just start with dinner,” I said, embarrassed at the hope creeping into my voice.

“Hmm. We know how well that went the last time.”

I looked over at Blanche and saw she had turned away to rifle through her purse, giving us a moment of privacy. Clearing my throat, I took a step toward Nix and reached out to curl my hand over his shoulder, where I could feel too much bone and not enough meat. 

“It could be different,” I said. “This time.”

I was such a fool. So endlessly a fool for him. But he was a fool for me too, and I could see that plainly when his mouth curled at the corners and it was like the sun came out at last. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was enough. On that dreary day and under that hopeless sky, it was enough to make me lose my head for him all over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't seen yet, there has been some AMAZING art made for this fic. @trailsofpaper drew an incredible comic of a scene in Chapter 4: [cover](http://trailsofpaper.tumblr.com/post/150037391843/at-least-half-an-hour-passed-before-a-cab-pulled), first five pages, [second five pages](http://trailsofpaper.tumblr.com/post/150692909208/cover-first-five-pages-comic-adaptation-of-at). Also, @celestial-annihilation drew [the sex scene in Chapter 6](http://celestial-annihilation.tumblr.com/post/150701719139/i-want-you-i-said-when-we-broke-apart-that) (nsfw). Please give them some love!
> 
> Thank you so much for for your time, and thank you to all of those who commented and encouraged me in various ways along the way!


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